Eye of the Red Tsar

by Sam Eastland

  “Where is the basement?” asked Pekkala.

  “This way,” said Anton. Carrying a lantern, he led Pekkala through the kitchen to a pale yellow door, greasy fingerprints smudged around its old brass handle.

  Anton opened the door.

  A plain wooden staircase led down into the dark.

  “Down there,” Anton told him, “is where we found the guards.”

  The two men descended to the basement. On their left, at the bottom of the stairs, they came upon a coal storage chamber. A trapdoor in the ceiling opened to allow the coal to be poured in from ground level. What remained in the chamber was mostly dust, heaped in the corners. Only a few nuggets of coal lay strewn around the floor. It seemed as if even the coal had been stolen. To their right was a room which would normally have been closed off with a double set of doors, but the doors were open, revealing a space four paces wide by ten paces long, with a low, arched ceiling. Stripes of white and pinkish red papered the walls. On the pink stripes, Pekkala saw a repeating image which reminded him of a stylized design of a small tortoise. Rooms like this were used for the storage of clothing during the seasons when it was not being used.

  Tidy as the place must once have been, it was now destroyed. Huge chunks of the wallpaper were missing, revealing a latticework of plaster, earth, and stone, much of which was now strewn across the floor. Bullet holes pocked the walls. Large stains of dried blood patched the ground, mixing with crumbs of mortar to form crusts like dark brown shields lying scattered on an ancient battlefield. Streaks of blood appeared to hang suspended in the air, and only by focusing hard could Pekkala see that they had, in fact, been splashed across the walls.

  “Based on what Katamidze told me,” he said, “the guards were killed upstairs and dragged down here, probably to confuse investigators about where all this blood came from.”

  “If you say so.” Anton looked around nervously. The bullet holes in the walls seemed to peer at them like eyes.

  Pekkala spotted the lips of cartridge rims lying in the dust. Bending down, he picked one up and turned it over in his fingers. He used his thumb to rub away dust from the base and saw a tiny dent in the center where the gun’s firing pin had ignited the percussion cap. The markings around the base were Russian, dated 1918, indicating that the ammunition had been new when it was fired. Gathering up a handful of other cartridges, he noted that they were all made by the same manufacturer and all bore the same date.

  “I have been meaning to talk to you,” said Anton.

  Pekkala turned to his brother, who stood like a statue, lantern raised above his head to light the room. “About what?”

  Anton glanced over his shoulder, to check that Kirov was nowhere around. “About that thing you called a fairy tale.”

  “You mean the Tsar’s treasure?”

  Anton nodded. “You and I both know it exists.”

  “Oh, it exists,” agreed Pekkala. “I won’t argue with that. The fairy tale is that I know where it’s hidden.”

  Anton struggled to contain his frustration. “The Tsar kept no secrets from you. You may be the only one on earth he really trusted. He must have told you where he hid his gold.”

  “Even if I did know where it was,” Pekkala said, “it’s precisely because the Tsar did trust me that I would not think of taking it.”

  Anton reached out and gripped his brother’s arm. “The Tsar is dead! His blood is on the floor beneath your feet. Your loyalty now is to the living.”

  “If Alexei is alive, that gold belongs to him.”

  “And after what your loyalty has cost you, don’t you think that you deserve some of it as well?”

  “The only gold I need is what the dentist put in my teeth.”

  “And what about Ilya? What does she deserve?”

  At the mention of her name, Pekkala shuddered. “Leave her out of this,” he said.

  “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten her,” Anton taunted.

  “Of course not. I think about her all the time.”

  “And you think perhaps she has forgotten you?”

  Pekkala shrugged. He seemed to be in pain, as if his shoulder blades had grown too heavy for his back.

  “You waited for her, didn’t you?” Anton insisted. “Then who’s to say she did not wait for you? She paid a price for her loyalty, too, but her loyalty was not to the Tsar. It was to you. And you owe it to her, when you find her again, to make sure she doesn’t end up begging in the street.”

  Pekkala’s head was spinning. The patterns on the wallpaper danced before his eyes. It seemed to him the dull brown stains upon the floorboards were shining once again with the glimmer of fresh blood.

  It was March 1917.

  Pekkala heard a knocking at the door of his cottage on the Tsarskoye Selo estate, where he had been confined for months.

  When he answered the door, he was astonished to see the Tsar standing there. Even though they were both prisoners here, the Tsar had never come to visit him before. In the peculiar balance of their lives, and even in a time like this, Pekkala’s privacy was more sacred than the Tsar’s.

  The Tsar had aged in the past two months. The skin under his eyes sagged. The color was leached from his cheeks. He wore a slate gray tunic with plain brass buttons and a collar buttoned tight against his throat. “May I come in?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Pekkala answered.

  The Tsar waited a moment. “Then perhaps you could step aside.”

  Pekkala almost tripped over himself getting out of the way.

  “I can’t stay long,” the Tsar said. “They have me under constant surveillance. I must get back before they notice I am gone.” Standing in the low-ceilinged front room, the Tsar glanced at the pale yellow walls, taking in the little fireplace and the chair set out before it. His eyes roamed around the room until at last his gaze locked on Pekkala’s. “I apologize for not contacting you until now. But the truth is, the less you are seen with me, the better. I’ve heard a rumor that we are to be moved away from here, my family and I, sometime in the next couple of months.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I heard someone mention Siberia. At least we will stay together. That is part of the agreement.” He sighed heavily. “Things have taken a turn for the worse. I was obliged to send a message to Major Kolchak. You remember him, don’t you?”

  “Yes, Excellency. Your insurance policy.”

  “Exactly. And in the spirit of taking care of what is valuable to me”—the Tsar smiled bleakly—“my old friend, I want you to get out of here.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a leather wallet. “Here are the documents for your journey.”

  “Documents?”

  “Forged, of course. Identity. Train tickets. Some money. They’re still taking proper currency. The Bolsheviks have not had time to print their own yet.”

  “But, Excellency,” he protested, “I cannot agree to this—”

  “Pekkala, if our friendship has meant anything to you, do not force me to take responsibility for your death. As soon as we have gone from Tsarskoye Selo, they’ll waste no time rounding up whoever’s left. And I can no more vouch for their safety than I can for my own. Once they realize you are missing, Pekkala, they will begin a search. The more of a head start you can get, the safer you will be. As you know,” the Tsar continued, “they have sealed off all entrances except the main gate and the entrance to the kitchen, but there is a section near the Lamskoy Pavilion which has been only partially blocked. It’s too narrow for vehicles, but a man alone can get through. A car is waiting for you there. It will take you as far as it can towards the Finnish border. There are no trains coming into the city, but they are still running in the outer districts. With any luck, you can catch one of those bound for Helsinki.” The Tsar held out the leather wallet. “Take it, Pekkala.”

  Still confused, Pekkala removed the wallet from the Tsar’s outstretched hand.

  “Ah. And there is one more thing,” said the Tsar. Reaching into the pock
et of his tunic, he removed Pekkala’s copy of the Kalevala, which he had borrowed months before. “Perhaps you thought I had forgotten.” The Tsar placed the book in Pekkala’s hands. “I enjoyed it very much, Pekkala. You should take another look at it.”

  “But, Excellency.” Pekkala set the book down on the table. “I know all the stories by heart.”

  “Trust me, Pekkala.” The Tsar picked up the book again and slapped it gently against Pekkala’s chest.

  Pekkala stared at him in confusion. “Very well, Excellency.” To hear the Tsar rambling like this almost brought him to tears. He understood that there was nothing more he could do. “When am I to leave?”

  “Now!” The Tsar walked to the open doorway and pointed across the wide expanse of the Alexander Park, in the direction of the Lamskoy Pavilion. “It’s time you settled down with that schoolteacher of yours. Where is she now?”

  “Paris, Excellency.”

  “Do you know exactly where she is?”

  “No, but I will find her.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” the Tsar replied. “That’s what you’re trained in, after all. I wish I could come with you, Pekkala.”

  They both knew how impossible that was.

  “Now go,” the Tsar told him. “Before it is too late.”

  Helpless to object, Pekkala set out across the park. Before he disappeared among the trees, however, he looked back towards his cottage.

  The Tsar was still there, watching him go. He raised one hand in farewell.

  In that moment, Pekkala felt a piece of himself die, like darkness turning in upon itself.

  “IF YOU COULD JUST BRING US TO IT,” ANTON INSISTED. “WE wouldn’t have to take it all.”

  “Enough,” said Pekkala.

  “Kirov doesn’t even need to know about it.”

  “Enough!” he said again.

  Anton fell silent.

  Their shadows tilted with the movements of the lantern flame.

  “For the last time, Anton, I don’t know where it is.”

  Anton wheeled and started walking up the stairs.

  “Anton!”

  But his brother did not stop.

  Knowing it was useless to pursue him, Pekkala returned to the dusty cartridges in the palm of his hand. Each one was 7.62 mm. They belonged to an M1895 Nagant. The revolver had a flimsy-looking barrel, a handle like a banana, and a large hammer like a thumb bent back on itself. In spite of its ungainly appearance, however, the Nagant was a work of art; its beauty emerged only when it was put to use. It fitted perfectly in the hand, the balance was precise, and for a handgun it was extremely accurate.

  It was the unique shape of the cartridges Pekkala had found which betrayed the Nagant’s identity. In most types of ammunition, the bullet extended from the end of the cartridge, but in a Nagant’s cartridge the bullet nestled inside the brass tube. The reason for this was to form a gas seal which would provide more power when the gun fired. This gave the Nagant the added advantage of being adaptable for use with a silencer. Guns equipped with silencers had quickly become the weapon of choice for murderers: Pekkala had often encountered Nagants at crime scenes, the large cigar-like silencers screwed onto the ends of their barrels, abandoned near the bodies of shooting victims.

  The sound of gunfire in an enclosed space like this must have been deafening, Pekkala thought. He tried to imagine the room as it would have been when the shooting finally stopped. The smoke and shattered plaster. Blood soaking into the dust. “A slaughterhouse,” he whispered to himself.

  More bullet marks gashed the walls on the staircase, showing that the guards had not given up without a fight. On the second floor, where the Romanovs had lived, there were four bedrooms, two large and two small, as well as two studies. One room, its walls papered in dark green with fitted wooden shelves, had obviously belonged to a man. The other, whose walls were peach-colored, held a cushioned bench, upon which the woman of the house could have sat and looked out at people passing by on the road. The bench still lay in the room, tipped over on its side. One of its legs had been torn off by the impact of a bullet. An oval mirror hung crookedly on the wall, one shark’s tooth of glass remaining in the frame while the rest of it had fallen to the ground. Cobwebs hung on the light fixture above him. Traces of whitewash were still visible on the windowpanes. The Whites must have cleaned it off when they occupied the house, thought Pekkala.

  He stood on the landing, his eye following the mercury-bright line of the polished bannister down to the ground floor. He tried to imagine the Tsar standing in this same spot. He remembered how the Tsar would sometimes pause in the middle of a sentence or when striding down one of the long hallways of the Winter Palace. He would remain motionless, like a man who heard music in the distance and was trying to pick up the tune. Now, as Pekkala made his way downstairs, he remembered times in the forest when he had watched stags, with antlers like forked branches of lightning emerging from their skulls, pause in just that way, waiting for some danger to reveal itself.

  THE THREE MEN SAT TIRED AND STONY-FACED AROUND THE BARE wood kitchen table. The only sound was the scraping of spoons inside tins of food. They had no plates or bowls. Anton had simply opened half a dozen cans of vegetables and army ration meat and set them in the middle of the table. When one man was tired of eating sliced carrots, he put the tin back on the table and picked up a jar of shredded beets. They drank water from the well outside, poured into a chip-rimmed flower vase which they’d found on the floor of an upstairs room.

  Kirov was the first to break. He shoved away his can of meat and snarled, “How much of this do I have to endure?” From his pocket, he pulled out the wooden apple. He thumped it down on the table. The painted red apple seemed to glow from the inside. “It makes my mouth water just to look at it,” said Kirov. He reached into his pocket and brought out his pipe. “To make things worse, I am almost out of tobacco.”

  “Come now, Kirov,” Anton said. “What’s become of our happy little Junior Man?” He removed a bulging leather pouch from his pocket and inspected its contents. A leafy smell of unburned tobacco wafted across the table. “My own supply is holding out quite nicely.”

  “Lend me some,” said Kirov.

  “Get your own.” Anton breathed in, ready to say more, but his sentence was interrupted by a sound like a pebble thrown against a window.

  The three men jumped.

  The pipe fell out of Kirov’s mouth.

  “What the hell was that?” Anton asked.

  The sound came again, louder now.

  Anton drew his gun.

  “Someone is at the door,” Pekkala said.

  Whoever it was had come around the back, rather than risk being seen at the front of the house.

  Pekkala went to see who it was.

  The other two stayed at the table.

  When Pekkala reappeared, he was followed by an old man with a wide belly and a side-to-side plod which made him teeter like a metronome as he walked into the room. With small, almond-brown eyes, he peered suspiciously at Anton.

  “This is Yevgeny Mayakovsky,” Pekkala said.

  The old man nodded in greeting.

  “He says,” continued Pekkala, “he has information.”

  “I remember you.” Anton was staring at the old man.

  “I remember you, too.” Mayakovsky turned to leave. “Perhaps I should be going now—” he said.

  “Not so fast.” Anton held up his hand. “Why don’t you stay for a while?” He pulled out a chair and patted the seat. “Make yourself comfortable.”

  Reluctantly, Mayakovsky sat, sweat already dappling his red-veined cheeks.

  “How is it you know each other?” asked Pekkala.

  “Oh, he tried this little trick once before,” Anton replied. “The day the Cheka arrived, he showed up with information to sell. Swore he could make himself useful to us.”

  “And did he?” Kirov asked.

  “We didn’t give him the chance,” Anton replied.

&nb
sp; “They broke my nose,” said Mayakovsky, quietly. “It was uncivilized.”

  “If you were looking for civilization,” replied Anton, “you knocked at the wrong door.”

  “When I saw the lights on here,” continued Mayakovsky, ignoring him, “I did not realize it was you.” He stirred in his chair. “I’ll just be on my way—”

  “No one is going to hurt you this time,” Pekkala told him.

  Mayakovsky eyed him. “Is that so?”

  “I give you my word,” Pekkala replied.

  “I’ve got something worth knowing,” said Mayakovsky, tapping a stubby finger against his temple.

  “What are you talking about?” asked Pekkala.

  “When the Whites came in, they set up a board of inquiry. They didn’t believe the Romanovs had survived. All they were interested in was making sure that the Reds took the blame. Then, when the Reds came back, they set up their own inquiry. Just like the Whites, they figured the Romanovs had all been killed. The difference was that the Reds wanted to be told that the guards in this house had taken matters into their own hands. It seemed like everyone wanted the Romanovs dead, but nobody wanted to be responsible for killing them. And then, of course, there’s what really happened.”

  “And what is that?” asked Pekkala.

  Mayakovsky clapped his hands together softly. “Well, that is the part which I have come to sell.”

  Anton snorted. “We don’t have money for buying information.”

  “You could trade,” said Mayakovsky, his voice barely above a whisper.

  “Trade what?” asked Kirov.

  The old man licked his lips. “That’s a nice pipe you’re smoking.”

  “Forget it!” Kirov’s back straightened. “You’re not getting this!”

  “Give him the pipe,” said Pekkala.

  “What?”

  “Yes, I would like that pipe,” said Mayakovsky.

  “Well, you can’t have it!” shouted Kirov. “I’m already sleeping on the floor. You can’t expect me to—”

  “Give him the pipe,” repeated Pekkala, “and let’s hear what this man has to say.”