by Sam Eastland
He was not able to immediately identify the woman who lay at the top of the heap. Her corpse bore no distinguishing marks. But as he stared at the hand, he felt a shudder of certainty. Pekkala had learned to trust his instinct, even if it had not yet been tested against the checklist of rational thought.
Pekkala placed the skull of the woman with the rest of her body and moved on to the next one.
Over the next half hour, he untangled the bodies of three more women from the pile and laid them out. All had been shot in the face.
By now, there was little doubt in his mind that these were the Romanov sisters—Olga, Maria, Anastasia, and Tatiana.
Beneath lay a fifth woman, undoubtedly the Tsarina, due to the size of her body and the more mature cut of her clothes, who had also been shot in the head. Unlike the others, however, she had been shot from behind. The exiting bullet had blown away the forehead, exposing a massive cavity in the skull. She had died this way, he reasoned, as she sought to shield one of her children from the killer’s gun.
For all of them, Pekkala knew, death would have been instantaneous. He tried to draw some comfort from that fact.
Pekkala noted the obvious lack of resistance by the women. The shots had all been carefully aimed, which would not have been possible if the victims had put up a fight.
Then Pekkala came to the last body.
By then, the batteries of his flashlight were beginning to die. The light through the bubble-eyed crystal had gone from a blinding white to a dull brass yellow. The thought that it might die altogether, leaving him sightless among these corpses, filled his brain with mutterings of dread.
The last body was that of a man, lying on its side. His bones had been partially crushed by the weight of the other corpses which had been thrown down upon it. The rib cage and collarbone had collapsed. Beneath him, and spreading out in a pool on either side, the ground was black and oily.
The whole body was covered with a layer of dry, yellowy-brown mold. The coat buttons protruded like little mushrooms from the cloth. Pekkala reached out and brushed his thumb over the dust which covered the buttons, revealing the double-headed eagle of the Romanovs.
The man’s left arm was broken, probably by the fall. The right arm lay across his face. Pekkala wondered if the man had survived the fall and tried to protect himself from the bodies which were thrown down after him.
In addition to riding breeches and tall boots, the dead man wore a tunic in the gymnastyrka style. The tunic had been modified to open down the front and the stand collar was decorated with two thick bands of silver brocade. The color of the tunic had originally been a pale greenish brown, the front and hem trimmed with the same silver brocade as the collar. Now it was the color of a rotten apple. He had seen this tunic before.
Now there was no doubt in Pekkala’s mind that this was indeed the body of the Tsar. The Tsar had owned dozens of different uniforms, each representing different branches of service of the Russian military. This particular uniform, which the Tsar put on when reviewing his regiments of Guards, had been one of the most comfortable to wear. Because of that, it was also one of his favorites.
Four bullet wounds were clearly visible in the chest of the tunic. Pekkala studied the faded stains of blood that radiated from the wounds. Powder burns revealed that the shots had come from extremely close range. Gently, Pekkala moved the arm, to better see the dead man’s face. He fully expected the skull to have been shattered like the rest, but was surprised: it was still intact. No bullet had penetrated the dura oblongata. He stared in confusion at the remains of the neatly trimmed beard, the hollow where the nose had been, the shriveled lips pulled back around a set of strong, straight teeth.
Pekkala stood back, gasping in a breath not filled with the dust of decay. He glanced upwards, to where a velvet disk of night sky showed the mouth of the mine shaft. At that moment, as if jolted from the scaffolding of his own body, Pekkala found himself looking through the eyes of the Tsar as those last seconds of his life played out on the floor of the mine. From far above, spears of light stabbed down towards him. They glinted off a tunnel of wet stone. Illuminated raindrops flickered like jewels all around. Then he saw silhouettes of the Tsar’s wife and children come tumbling down towards him, fingers spread like wing tips, the dresses of the women thrumming with the speed of their descent. Pekkala felt them pass right through him, trailing the night behind them like black comets, and he heard their bones shatter like glass.
Pekkala shook the nightmare from his head. He forced himself to focus on the work that lay before him. Why, he asked himself, would the killer execute the women with a shot to the head but leave the Tsar’s face intact? It would have made more sense if things had been done the other way around, particularly if the killings had been done, as he suspected, by a male. Such a killer would have been more likely to disfigure someone of his own gender.
Suddenly Pekkala’s heart began to thunder in his chest. He had been so focused on this detail that he had completely forgotten something far more important.
The Tsar’s corpse was the last one in the pile.
Hoping he might somehow be mistaken, Pekkala glanced at the bodies of the women laid out on the dirt floor of the mine.
But there had been no mistake. One body was missing.
Alexei was not among the dead.
Every time Pekkala thought about the boy, he felt a constriction in his throat. Of all the members of that family, Alexei had been his favorite. The daughters were charming, particularly the eldest daughter, Olga, but all four of them remained aloof. They were beautiful, although in a melancholy way, and rarely acknowledged his presence. Pekkala knew he made them nervous, towering above them in his black overcoat and seemingly immune to the kind of frivolity which occupied much of their lives. He lacked the refinements of the seemingly endless procession of visitors received by the Romanov family. The stylishly dressed barons, lords, and dukes—there was always a title in there somewhere—tweaking their trim mustaches and peppering their speech with French exclamations, considered Pekkala too coarse for their company.
“Don’t mind them, Pekkala!” said Alexei.
Following reports of an explosion in the streets of Petersburg, Pekkala had been summoned by the Tsar to the royal estate, known as Tsarskoye Selo and located on the outskirts of the city.
As he entered the Tsar’s study, in the north wing of the Alexander Palace, a cluster of guests barged past him without so much as a glance in his direction.
The Tsar was sitting at his desk.
Alexei sat beside him, his head in a white bandage which bulged with some concoction of herbs prescribed to him by Rasputin.
Alexei’s expression was always the same—both warm and sad. The hemophilia which afflicted the boy had come so close many times to taking his life that the Tsar, and the Tsarina Alexandra in particular, seemed almost to have absorbed the disease into their own bodies. Alexei could have bled to death from the kind of nick or scrape a normal boy might expect to receive every day. This frailty had required him to live as a person might if they were made of glass. And so the parents lived as if they too were as fragile, like the tens of thousands of pieces of amber which plated the walls of the Catherine Palace’s Amber Room, or the extraordinarily intricate Fabergé eggs the Tsar gave to his wife as birthday presents.
Even Alexei’s friends were hand-selected by his parents for their ability to play gently. Pekkala remembered the soft-spoken Makarov brothers—thin and nervous boys whose ears stuck out and who carried their shoulders in a perpetual hunch, like children do when they are waiting for a firework to explode. In spite of his frailty, Alexei outlived them: both had died in the war.
No matter what precautions they took with their son, his parents seemed always to be waiting for that moment when Alexei would simply fade away. Then they, too, would crumble to dust.
“Alexei is right,” the Tsar said. “You mustn’t mind those people.” Dismissively, he flipped his hand in the direction
of the guests.
“They did not give you the welcome you deserve,” said Alexei.
“They do not know me,” replied Pekkala.
“Lucky for you, eh?” The Tsar smiled. He always seemed to cheer up when Pekkala was around.
“But we know you, Pekkala,” said Alexei, “and that’s what matters most.”
“Now then, Pekkala! See what I have here!” The Tsar gestured towards a red handkerchief which lay upon the desk. The handkerchief looked out of place beside the neatly arranged pens, scissors, inkwell, and jade-handled letter opener. The Tsar required his desk to be kept in perfect order. When speaking to people in his study, particularly those whose company he did not care for, he would often make minute adjustments to these items, as if the distance of a millimeter between objects was the absolute margin of his sanity.
Now, with the flourish of a magician performing a trick, the Tsar whisked away the handkerchief to reveal what lay beneath.
To Pekkala, it looked like some kind of large egg. Its colors were luminous—a blur of flaming greens and reds and oranges. He wondered if it might be another one of Fabergé’s creations.
“What do you think, Pekkala?” asked the Tsar
Pekkala knew how to make the most of these games. “It appears to be”—he paused—“some sort of magic bean.”
The Tsar burst out laughing, showing his strong white teeth.
Alexei laughed too, but he always bowed his head and kept a hand against his mouth.
“Magic bean!” shouted the Tsar. “Now I have heard everything!”
“It’s a mango,” said Alexei. “Those people who just left brought it to us as a present. It’s come all the way from South America by the fastest ships and boats and trains. According to what they said, that mango was hanging from a tree not even three weeks ago.”
“A mango,” repeated Pekkala, struggling to recall if he had ever heard that word before.
“It’s a fruit of some sort,” said the Tsar.
“Pekkala has no time for mangos.” Alexei was trying to make him smile.
“Unless”—Pekkala held up a finger—“it is guilty of a crime.”
“A crime!” laughed the Tsar.
Pekkala held out his hand for the mango, and when the Tsar had given it to him, Pekkala pretended to examine it closely. “Suspicious,” he muttered. “Deeply suspicious.”
Alexei rocked back in his chair, delighted.
“Well, then,” said the Tsar, playing along, “it must pay the ultimate price. There’s only one thing to be done.” He opened the drawer to his desk and pulled out a large folding knife with a stag-horned handle.
The Tsar freed the blade, which locked with a sharp click. Taking the fruit in one hand, he proceeded to slice open the luminous skin, revealing a vivid orange flesh inside. Carefully, he cut into the mango. Keeping the slice pinned between the flat edge of the blade and the side of his thumb, he offered one to Pekkala and to his son and then took one for himself.
In silence, the three of them chewed.
The cold sweetness of the fruit seemed to jump around in Pekkala’s mouth. He could not repress small grumbling noises of appreciation.
“Pekkala likes it,” said Alexei.
“I do,” agreed Pekkala. Looking out over the Tsar’s shoulder, he watched snow falling on the grounds of the palace.
They finished the mango.
The Tsar wiped the knife blade on the red handkerchief and then returned the knife to his desk. When he looked up to meet Pekkala’s gaze, the Tsar’s face had hardened into that expression which always came to him when the troubles of the outside world intruded.
He had already guessed that reports of the bomb blast in Petrograd were true. And even if the Tsar did not know who had been killed, he had no doubt that someone loyal to him had met their end. It was as if he could actually see the splintered body of Minister Orlov, whom he would later learn had died in the attack, so torn apart that almost the entire length of his spine lay like a white snake beside the dead man’s rib cage.
These attacks were growing more frequent.
No matter how many terrorist plots were uncovered, there always seemed to be others which slipped through the wire undetected.
“I do not wish to discuss the recent unpleasantness in Petrograd,” said the Tsar. It was more of a request than a command. In a gesture of fatigue, he rested his face in his hands, kneading his fingertips into his closed eyelids. “We’ll sort it out later.”
“Yes, Excellency.”
Oblivious to the real reason for Pekkala’s visit, Alexei was still smiling at him.
Pekkala winked
Alexei winked back.
Pekkala backed up three paces, turned, and headed for the door
“Pekkala!” the Tsar called.
Pekkala stopped and turned again and waited.
“Don’t ever change,” said the Tsar.
“Ever!” shouted Alexei.
When Pekkala left the Tsar’s study, he closed the door behind him. Just as he was doing this, he heard Alexei’s voice.
“Why does Pekkala never smile, Papa?”
Pekkala paused. He did not mean to eavesdrop, but the question had caught him by surprise. He did not think of himself as a man who never smiled.
“Pekkala is a serious man,” he heard the Tsar reply. “He views the world with gravity. He does not have time for the games which you and I enjoy.”
“Is he unhappy?” asked Alexei.
“No, I don’t think so. He just keeps to himself how he feels.”
“Why did you choose him to be your special investigator? Why not just choose another detective in the Okhrana or the Gendarmerie?”
Pekkala glanced up and down the empty corridor. Laughter came from distant rooms. He knew he should move on, but the question Alexei had asked was one he’d often asked himself, and it seemed to him that if he did not learn the answer now, he never would. So he stayed, barely breathing, straining to hear their voices through the thick slab of the door.
“A man like Pekkala,” said the Tsar, “does not realize his own potential. I knew that the first time I set eyes on him. You see, Alexei, it is necessary for people in our walk of life to understand with a single glimpse the character of those we meet. We have to know whether to trust someone or to keep them at arm’s length. What a person does matters more than what they say. I saw Pekkala refusing to jump his horse over a barbed-wire fence which some sadist of a drill instructor had constructed, and I watched how he behaved when the sergeant was dressing him down. And you know, he did not show a trace of fear. If I had not been there to witness it, that sergeant would have had Pekkala expelled from the ranks for insubordination. And it wouldn’t have mattered to Pekkala.”
“But why not?” asked the boy. “If he didn’t want to be in the regiment …”
“Oh, but he did, only not on those terms. Most of those cadets would simply have sacrificed the horse and done as they were told.”
“But isn’t it important,” asked Alexei, “to be obedient no matter what?”
“Sometimes, yes, but not for what I had in mind.”
“You mean, you chose him because you thought he might not do as he was told?”
“What I needed, Alexei, was a man who could not be threatened or beaten or corrupted into surrendering his sense of what was right or wrong. And that will never happen to a person like Pekkala.”
“But why not?”
“Because it would not occur to him. Men like that, Alexei, are fewer than one in a million. When you find them, you will know them at first sight.”
“Why would he choose to do the job he does? Do you think he enjoys such a life?”
“It is not a question of enjoying it or not. He is built for it, like a greyhound is built for running. He does the thing he was put on this earth to do, because he knows that it matters.”
As he listened to the Tsar, Pekkala was reminded of his father, doing the job which no one else would do. There
had been times in the past months when Pekkala felt overwhelmed by the extraordinary coincidences which had led to him working for the Tsar. Now, hearing those words, what had once seemed the result of impossible randomness appeared to him almost inevitable.
“Did you really need someone like him?” asked Alexei.
“It is an unfortunate truth that the Okhrana is filled with spies. So is the Gendarmerie. The two branches are spying on each other. We send spies into the ranks of the terrorists. We even create spy rings which appear to be working against us, but are in fact controlled by the government. There is no end to the deception. When people reach a point where they do not expect to be ruled by leaders they can trust, that country is headed for ruin. With this going on, Alexei, what the people needed was one person they knew they could depend on.”
“Even more than you, Papa?”
“I hope not,” replied the Tsar, “but the answer is yes, all the same.”
“ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?” KIROV’S VOICE RICOCHETED DOWN THE MINE shaft.
Looking up, Pekkala glimpsed the silhouettes of Anton and Kirov, looking like paper cutouts as they leaned over the hole.
“I’m fine,” he stammered.
“Is it who we thought?” asked Anton.
“Yes, but one of them is gone.” Until now Pekkala had considered only three possibilities—one: that there would be no bodies; two: that bodies would be there but they would not be the Romanovs; and three: that the Romanovs would indeed be found dead at the bottom of that mine shaft. Pekkala had not factored in the chance that one of the Romanovs would be missing.
“Gone?” shouted Kirov. “Who?”
“Alexei,” answered Pekkala.
The flashlight was almost extinguished now, reduced to a coppery haze which barely reached beyond the bubble lens. The darkness was crowding in around him.