Eye of the Red Tsar

by Sam Eastland

  From his coat pocket, Pekkala removed the old book he had brought with him. As he read, his expression grew distant. The lines smoothed out in his face.

  “What’s that?” Kirov demanded.

  “The Kalevala,” murmured Pekkala and kept reading.

  “The what?”

  Pekkala groaned and set the book down on his knee. “It’s a book of stories,” he explained.

  “What sort of stories?”

  “Legends.”

  “I don’t know any legends.”

  “They are like ghost stories. You don’t have to believe them, but it’s hard to think there is no truth in them at all.”

  “Do you believe in ghosts, Pekkala?”

  “Why are you asking, Kirov?”

  “Because I just saw one,” he said.

  Pekkala sat up. “What?”

  Kirov shrugged awkwardly. “While I was making the fire, someone looked in at that window.” He pointed to the curtains in the corner near the fireplace. From where the two men sat, they could see a small piece of window glass which was not covered by the curtain. Through this, the silhouettes of tree branches stirred like strange aquatic creatures in the moonlight.

  “It’s probably just some drunk on his way home from the tavern who wanted to see why there were lights on in this place. People are bound to be curious.”

  Embarrassed, Kirov scratched at his blushing cheeks. “It’s just that … well … it just sounds …”

  “What is it, Kirov? Spit it out so I can get back to reading my book.”

  “It’s just that I could have sworn that man looking in at the window was the Tsar. That beard of his. Those sad-looking eyes. Of course, I’ve only seen pictures. And it was dark. … Maybe I just imagined him.”

  Pekkala got to his feet and left the room. He opened the front door. The night breeze seeped past him, replacing the still air which had accumulated inside the Ipatiev house. For a long time, he stood there, staring at the shuttered windows of houses across the street, searching for any sign which might give away the presence of an observer. He did not see anybody, but he did have the feeling that someone was there.

  When at last Pekkala returned to the front room, he found Kirov squatting before the fire, adding pieces of a broken chair.

  Pekkala sat down where he had been before.

  The flames spat as they rose around the splintered wood.

  “I told you I must have imagined it,” said Kirov.

  “Maybe,” Pekkala replied.

  PEKKALA SAT UP ABRUPTLY.

  The crash of breaking glass had woken him.

  Kirov was already on his feet. His hair stuck up in tufts. “It came from in there.” He pointed to the kitchen. Softly he walked into the next room and lit one of the lanterns.

  Pekkala threw back his blanket and rubbed his face. Probably just Anton, he thought. He’s got himself locked out and broke a window trying to get in again.

  “Damned kids!” said Kirov.

  Pekkala got to his feet. He took the Webley from its holster, just in case. On stiff legs, he made his way into the kitchen. The first thing he saw was that the window above the sink had been broken. Shards scattered the floor.

  Kirov peered out the broken window. “Go away!” he shouted into the darkness. “Get the hell out of here!”

  “What did they throw?” asked Pekkala.

  “A piece of a table leg.”

  Pekkala’s breath caught in his throat.

  In Kirov’s hand was a German stick grenade: a gray-painted metal cylinder like a small soup can attached to a wooden stick a little shorter than a man’s forearm, so that the grenade could be thrown a great distance.

  “What?” asked Kirov. He looked at Pekkala, then at the stick in his hand. Suddenly, he seemed to understand. “Oh, my God,” he whispered.

  Pekkala grabbed the grenade from Kirov’s hand and threw it back through the kitchen window, shattering another pane of glass. Grabbing Kirov’s shirt, he pulled him down to the floor.

  The grenade clattered across the courtyard. Glass fragments clinked musically on the cobblestones.

  Pekkala put his hands over his ears, his mouth open to equalize the pressure, bracing for the roar. He knew that if the men outside had been properly trained, they would enter the house immediately after the detonation. Pekkala lay as close to the wall as he could get, to avoid being hurt when the windows and the door blew in. These grenades had a seven-second fuse. Vassileyev himself had taught him that. He waited, counting, but there was no explosion. Satisfied at last that the grenade had been a dud, he rose and looked out into the courtyard. Moonlight glinted off the glass shards and off the Emka’s windshield, dividing the courtyard into geometric shapes of bluish light and neatly chiseled angles of black shadow. The silence was profound.

  “Let’s go,” he said, nudging Kirov with his toe.

  Cautiously, the two men walked out into the courtyard. Stars fanned out across the sky.

  The gate was open. It had been closed when they went to sleep.

  “Should we try to follow them?” Kirov asked.

  Pekkala shook his head. “When they realize the grenade didn’t go off, they might come back. We’ll be safer if we wait for them here.”

  As Kirov left to get his gun, Pekkala caught sight of the grenade, lying by the storage shed. As he neared it, he could see what appeared to be a small white button lying beside it. Looking closely, he realized that the button was in fact a ball, the size of a small marble, with a hole drilled into the middle. A string had been threaded through the ball. The other end disappeared into the hollow handle of the grenade. This would have been covered with a metal screw cap until the grenade was to be used. The porcelain ball and the string were stored inside the stick and had to be pulled in order to ignite the fuse. Whoever threw the grenade had unscrewed the cap but forgot to pull the cord.

  “Maybe it was just a warning,” said Kirov, when Pekkala had explained why the grenade did not go off.

  Pekkala weighed the stick grenade in his hand, slapping the metal detonator can gently into his palm. He didn’t reply.

  While Kirov stood watch at the front of the house, Pekkala remained in the kitchen. In the darkness, he sat with the Webley and the grenade laid out in front of him. Tiny flecks of glass lay scattered across the tabletop. Through the broken window, he stared out into the night until his eyes ached and shadows danced about like people taunting him.

  Anton showed up at dawn. He went straight to the pump in the courtyard. Its gracefully curved handle wore an old coat of red paint the same vivid color as a holly berry. Rusted iron showed where the paint had been rubbed away. As Anton worked the lever, a bird-like shriek of grinding metal filled the air.

  A moment later, a shapeless explosion of silver emerged from the pump head and Anton stuck his face under the stream. When he raised his head, a plume of silver arced over his shoulder. He smoothed his hair back with both hands, eyes closed, mouth open, droplets falling from his chin.

  In that moment, Pekkala realized he had seen that pump before.

  It was in a picture, one which Pekkala had discovered in an issue of Pravda that was left with his winter’s rations at the trailhead in Krasnagolyana. The Tsar and his son, Alexei, were cutting wood with a large two-man saw. Each had hold of one end. A pile of wood stood off to one side. The pump was in the background. The photograph had been taken during the Tsar’s captivity in this place. The Tsar wore a plain service tunic, much like his captors would have worn. Alexei wore a heavy coat and fur hat, bundled up against a chill his father did not seem to feel. By the time Pekkala saw that picture, the paper was so out of date that the Tsar had been dead more than a year.

  Pekkala thought about the face Kirov had glimpsed in the window. Maybe this place is haunted after all, he thought.

  Anton barged into the kitchen. His eyes were bloodshot, the whites turned sickly yellow. One of his cheeks was bruised purple, the color almost black where his cheekbone nudged again
st the skin.

  “What happened to you?” Pekkala asked him.

  “Let’s just say that Mayakovsky isn’t the only one in this town who remembers me.”

  “We had another visitor last night.” Pekkala set the grenade on the table.

  Anton whistled quietly. He walked over and peered at it. “A dud?”

  “They didn’t pull the cord.”

  “That’s not something a person does by mistake.”

  “Then it’s a warning,” said Pekkala, “and next time we won’t be so lucky.”

  “I have to present my papers at the police station before you can officially begin your investigation,” Anton told him. “You can come along and see if they know anything.”

  ALEXANDER KROPOTKIN, THE SVERDLOVSK POLICE CHIEF, WAS A SQUAT, broad-shouldered man with a thick head of blond hair which he combed straight down over his forehead.

  While Pekkala and Anton stood waiting, Kropotkin sat behind his desk, leafing through the papers which Anton had presented to him. He got to the last page, squinted at the signature, then tossed the papers on the desk. “Why do you bother?” he asked.

  “Bother with what?” Anton asked.

  Kropotkin tapped the orders with a stubby index finger. “Comrade Stalin signed these orders. You can do whatever the hell you want. You don’t need my permission.”

  “It is a courtesy,” said Anton.

  Kropotkin sat forward, resting his forearms on the desk. He stared at Pekkala. “The Emerald Eye. I heard you were dead.”

  “You are not the only one who heard that.”

  “I also heard that you could not be bought, but here you are working for them.” He jerked his chin towards Anton.

  “I have not been bought,” Pekkala told him.

  “Bribed, then. Or threatened. It doesn’t matter. One way or another, you are working for them now.”

  The words cut into him, but Pekkala chose not to reply.

  Kropotkin turned his attention to Anton. “You look familiar. You were one of the Cheka guards, weren’t you?”

  “Perhaps,” Anton replied.

  “There is no perhaps. I don’t forget faces, and I saw you at the tavern the whole time you were here. How many times did I see Cheka men come to fetch you when you were too drunk to walk? And judging from your face, either you are perpetually bruised or you didn’t waste any time going back to your old habits. Now you come here to my office and talk to me about courtesy? You gentlemen can go to hell. How is that for courtesy?”

  “What’s got you all steamed up?” demanded Anton.

  “You want to know? Fine, I’ll tell you. This was a nice, quiet place until your lot brought the Romanovs here. Since then, nothing’s ever been the same. You know what people think of when you say the word ‘Sverdlovsk’?” He made a gun with his thumb and index finger and set it against his temple. “Death. Execution. Murder. Take your pick. None of it’s good. And every time things start to settle down, one of you people drops in and stirs things up again. Nobody wants you here, but I can’t kick you out.” He jerked his chin towards the door. “So just do your work and then leave us alone.”

  Pekkala took the grenade from the deep pocket inside his coat and set it on the desk.

  Kropotkin stared at it. “What’s that? A gift?”

  “Someone pitched it through our window last night,” Pekkala answered, “but forgot to pull the pin.”

  “It’s German,” added Anton.

  Kropotkin picked up the grenade. “Actually, it’s Austrian. The German stick grenades had belt clips on the cylinder here.” He tapped at the gray soup can which contained the explosives. “The Austrian ones didn’t.”

  “You were in the war?” Pekkala asked.

  “Yes,” replied Kropotkin, “and you learn these things when enough of them get thrown at you.”

  “We were hoping you might know where it came from.”

  “The Whites used these,” replied Kropotkin. “Most of the men who attacked Sverdlovsk had been in the Austrian Army before they came over to our side. Many of them were still using Austrian equipment.”

  “You think it might be someone who was with the Whites?” asked Pekkala.

  Kropotkin shook his head. “The man who threw this was not with the Whites.”

  “So you know who might have thrown this?”

  Kropotkin’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, I know exactly who threw this at you. There’s only one man insane enough to throw one of these at you who is also stupid enough not to have pulled the cord when he threw it. His name is Nekrasov. He was one of the militiamen who guarded the Romanovs before the Cheka came in and threw him out. I expect he’s still holding a grudge. As soon as the lights went on again in the Ipatiev house, he must have guessed that you people were back.”

  “But why would he bother to throw it?”

  “Best ask him that yourselves.” Kropotkin snatched up a pencil, scrawled an address on a notepad, tore off the sheet, and held it out. “This is where you’ll find him.”

  Anton removed the paper from his hand.

  “Don’t take it the wrong way,” laughed Kropotkin. “He tries to kill everybody. He just stinks at it. If Nekrasov hasn’t thrown at least one bomb at you by the time you leave, you might as well have stayed at home.”

  “At least I’m not the only one they hate around here,” said Anton, when he and Pekkala were back out in the street. “Do you want me to come with you to see Nekrasov?”

  “I’ll handle it,” said Pekkala. “You look as if you could use some sleep.”

  Anton nodded, his eyes narrowed against the morning sunlight. “I won’t argue with that.”

  THE DOOR OPENED A CRACK. FROM THE DARKNESS INSIDE THE HOUSE, a man peered out at Pekkala. “What do you want?”

  “Nekrasov?”

  The door swung wide, revealing a man with wavy gray hair and two days’ worth of stubble on his chin. “Who wants to know?”

  “My name is Pekkala,” he replied. Then he punched Nekrasov in the jaw.

  When Nekrasov woke up, he was slumped in a wheelbarrow with his arms tied to the wheel behind his back.

  Pekkala was sitting on a dark green wooden crate with rope handles. The crate had been stamped with the double-headed Habsburg eagle of the Austro-Hungarian Army. Under that, in yellow letters, were the words GRANATEN and ACHTUNG-EXPLOSIVEN.

  Nekrasov lived in a small, thatched-roof cottage with a white picket fence at the front. Inside, the ceiling was so low that Pekkala had to stoop, weaving among dried sprigs of sage, rosemary, and basil, tied with strands of grass and dangling from the beams. As his hand brushed them aside, the smell of the spices drifted softly through the air.

  With his hands hooked under Nekrasov’s armpits, Pekkala had dragged the man through a room with an old-fashioned bench set against the wall—the kind once used as beds in these single-story houses. Neatly folded on the bench was a blue blanket, along with a dirty red pillow, revealing that the bench was still being used for its original purpose. Next to the bench, Pekkala had found the box of grenades. Seventeen of the original thirty were still inside, each one wrapped in brown wax paper. When he opened the lid of the box, the marzipan smell of the explosives wafted up into his face.

  It had rained in the night and now the sun was burning off the moisture. While waiting for Nekrasov to regain consciousness, Pekkala had made himself a cheese sandwich in the man’s kitchen. Now he was eating the sandwich for his breakfast.

  Nekrasov’s eyes fluttered open. Blearily, he looked around, until he caught sight of Pekkala. “What did you say your name was?”

  “Pekkala,” he replied, as he finished his mouthful.

  Nekrasov struggled briefly, against the ropes, then sagged and glared at Pekkala. “You could at least have tied me to a chair.”

  “A wheelbarrow is just as good.”

  “I see you have discovered my grenades.”

  “They weren’t hard to find.”

  “The Whites left them behind. How did yo
u track me down so quickly?”

  “The police chief told me about you.”

  “Kropotkin!” Nekrasov leaned over the side of the wheelbarrow and spat. “He owes me money.”

  Pekkala held up the grenade. “Would you mind telling me why you threw this through the window last night?”

  “Because you people make me sick.”

  “Which people are you talking about?”

  “The Cheka. The GPU. The OGPU. Whatever you call yourselves now.”

  “I am none of those things,” said Pekkala.

  “Who else would go into that house? Besides, I saw one of your men go into the tavern last night. I recognized him. He’s one of the Cheka bastards who was guarding the Romanovs when they disappeared. You damned Commissar, at least have the decency to tell me the truth.”

  “I am no Commissar. I am an investigator. I have been engaged by the Bureau of Special Operations.”

  Nekrasov barked out a laugh. “What was their name last week? And what will it be next week? You’re all the same. You just keep changing the words around until they don’t mean anything anymore.”

  Pekkala nodded with resignation. “I have enjoyed our little chat,” he said. Then he got up and turned toward the door.

  “Where are you going?” called Nekrasov. “You can’t just leave me here.”

  “I’m sure someone else will come by. Eventually. It doesn’t look like you receive a lot of visitors, and to judge from what Kropotkin had to say about you, even those who do come are unlikely to set you free anytime soon.”

  “I don’t care. They can go to hell and so can you!”

  “You and Kropotkin share a similar vocabulary.”

  “Kropotkin!” Nekrasov spat again. “He’s the one you want to investigate. The Whites treated him well when they came into town. They didn’t rough him up like they did everybody else. And when the Reds came back, they made him the chief of police. He’s playing both sides, if you ask me, and a man who plays both sides will do anything.”

  In the open doorway, Pekkala squinted up into the sky. “It looks as if it’s going to be a hot day.”

  “I don’t care,” replied Nekrasov.