Eye of the Red Tsar

by Sam Eastland

  “No!” She slapped one hand against her knee. “What do you believe? Do you think he is alive or not?”

  “I think he might be, yes.” His voice barely rose above a whisper. “And if there is any chance that the Tsarevich is alive, I think your officer might help me to locate him.”

  “You will find him at the police station,” said Sister Ania, without hesitation.

  “He is under arrest?”

  “On the contrary,” she said. “He is in charge of the place. His name is Officer Kropotkin.”

  “Kropotkin. This will not be my first conversation with the police chief.”

  “That is just as well,” she replied. “He does not make a good first impression.”

  Sister Ania walked Pekkala back towards the entrance.

  As Pekkala passed by the crates filled with the belongings of the convent, he wondered in what dark warehouse they would be locked away and, if they ever saw the light of day again, what would be remembered of their owners and what convenient lies would be admitted.

  Before they stepped from the cool shade of the building into the glare of the gravel courtyard, Sister Ania rested her hand on his shoulder. “If the Tsarevich is alive, promise me you will see to it that no harm comes to him, Inspector. He has suffered enough for crimes he did not commit.”

  “I give you my word,” Pekkala answered.

  They walked out into the sun.

  “Do you believe in miracles, Inspector Pekkala?”

  “It is not in my nature.”

  “Then maybe it is time you started.”

  Propped against the convent wall was an old bicycle, its leather seat cracked and the black paint covered by a film of dust. The wooden handles showed a burnish of hard use, and the treads on the tires had been worn down almost smooth. In spite of its age, the old machine possessed a certain dignity, as those things do which have accompanied a person on the journey of their lives.

  Pekkala looked beyond the iron gates at the long walk down into Sverdlovsk. A fierce blue sky beat down upon the road. The dappling shadows of the poplar trees seemed to offer no comfort at all.

  He stared at the bicycle, imagining the cool breeze he would feel upon his face as he freewheeled down the hill, instead of drearily trudging through the heat.

  Sister Ania followed his gaze. “Take it,” she told him. “Otherwise, those men will carry it away. By the time it is released from storage that bicycle will be an antique, if it isn’t one already. If it will do you any good at all, please take it now and do not say another word about it.”

  Pekkala straddled the bicycle, the old leather seat not as comfortable as he would have liked.

  “Well,” said Sister Ania, smiling slightly, “let’s see how you handle it. I don’t want to be responsible for you breaking your neck.”

  He rode around in a circle on the gravel path. It had been years since he’d last ridden a bicycle and the front wheel wobbled as he struggled to stay upright.

  “Perhaps I have made a mistake,” she said.

  “Not at all,” he reassured her as he came to an uncertain halt beside her.

  She reached out to him.

  Pekkala took her small pink hand in his.

  Her touch shocked Pekkala like a jolt of electricity. It had been years since he’d last held the hand of a woman.

  “We need you,” she told him. “Don’t ever leave us again.”

  Pekkala opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He was too overwhelmed to speak.

  Sister Ania squeezed his hand, then let go. Turning, she walked back into the convent.

  Far below, at the base of the hill, the road forked left and right. The right fork led into town. The left fork passed along the side of a weed-choked pond and on into a pale green sea of barley fields.

  As soon as Pekkala cleared the gates, the road sloped sharply downwards. From then on, gravity propelled him and there was no need for him to pedal. His eyes began to water. The wind in his ears, like the roaring of a gas flame, was all that he could hear. Suddenly, catching himself completely by surprise, Pekkala laughed.

  When the bicycle was going so fast that he felt the back wheel begin to shudder, he reached out with his fingers, closed them around the bare metal of the brake levers, and gave them a light squeeze. But the bike did not slow down. Pekkala glanced down in time to see the old rubber brake pads coming apart in chunks as they connected with the wheel rim.

  With no idea why, Pekkala was still laughing. He could not help himself.

  He gave the brakes a tighter squeeze and the bicycle slowed momentarily. Then both pads flew off completely. He looked behind at the rear brakes and only then did he notice that the cable was missing, rendering them useless.

  He roared with laughter and the wind poured into his mouth.

  The wheels were buzzing now.

  Pekkala struggled to stay on the bike as the trees went by in a blur, a swishing sound as each one passed.

  By the time he reached the bottom of the hill, he was holding on for his life. He banked left, gripping the wood handles as tightly as he could. The road leveled out. He straightened the handlebars. Everything seemed to be working. Pekkala had just allowed himself a moment of silent self-congratulation when he heard a loud crack from somewhere behind him. The rear tire had exploded. Out of control, he veered to the left and blew through the tall grass which grew at the side of the road. For a brief moment, he had the sensation of flying, as if the free-spinning wheels might carry him up into the sky. A second later, garlanded with buttercups, daisies, and purple-flowered tangles of vetch, Pekkala pitched forward over the handlebars and into the pond.

  For a second, he lay there, facedown. The trees he had passed on his way down the hill still flickered behind his closed eyes.

  Then, planting his feet in the mud, Pekkala stood. Pond weeds clung to his coat like green confetti. A bloom of stirred-up silt spread out around him.

  As he made his way back to dry ground, pulling at the bicycle and exhausted by the weight of water in his clothes, an image of his childhood returned—of himself and Anton, dragging sleds behind them and struggling under the burden of their winter clothes. They used to sled down a steep hill near their house. The hill was used only in summer, when woodsmen dragged timber out of the forest, rolling the logs downhill to a river where they could be floated to the sawmill in town. In winter, he and Anton had the hill all to themselves. It was back before things changed between them—before the crematory oven, before Anton left to join the Finnish Regiment. Since then, the gap had only widened. Pekkala wondered, as the breath grew hot in his lungs, if they could ever return to the way things were before. Not without a miracle, he told himself. Maybe Sister Ania is right. Maybe it is time to start believing.

  “IS IT RAINING?” OFFICER KROPOTKIN WAS STILL SEATED AT HIS DESK, as if he had not moved since they’d last spoken. He turned around in his chair and looked out through his window at the blue sky.

  “No,” replied Pekkala. “It is not raining.”

  Kropotkin turned back to Pekkala. “Then why are you dripping on my floor?”

  “I have been in the duck pond.”

  “Leaving no stone unturned, are you?”

  Instinctively, Pekkala brought out his notebook. He opened it. A trickle of water poured out onto the floor. “I have a few questions,” he said.

  As Pekkala gave the details of his conversation with Sister Ania, Kropotkin’s face became redder and redder until finally he leaped up from his chair and shouted, “Enough! If all the brides of Christ are as talkative as Sister Ania, then I hope for His sake that Jesus has gone deaf in His old age! What kind of trouble has she gotten me into?”

  “None.”

  “And what is it you want to know from me?”

  “Why did the Tsar inform you that he no longer wanted to escape?”

  “That isn’t what he said. He simply ordered me not to attempt a rescue.”

  “Why did you think he did that?”

&nbs
p; “He may have heard about what happened to his brother, the Grand Duke Mikhail, who was being held under guard in another part of the country.”

  “He was shot while trying to escape, wasn’t he?”

  “Not exactly.” Kropotkin shook his head. “Apparently Mikhail had been communicating with a group who claimed they were still loyal to the Tsar. Mikhail followed their instructions and, only a few weeks before the Tsar was executed, he gave his guards the slip. What he didn’t realize was that the men who had promised to save him were actually members of the Cheka. They had set him up. As soon as he escaped, they gunned him down.” Kropotkin shrugged. “After that, maybe the Tsar no longer trusted us, and who can blame him? But I would gladly have given up my life to rescue him. If it had worked, who knows? This country might be a different place today.”

  “I have spoken to a number of people who believe that more than one of the Tsar’s children survived.”

  “What you are hearing,” said Kropotkin, “is the collective guilt of this town. Even if it were possible to believe that the Tsar and the Tsarina were guilty of the crimes held against them by the politicians in Moscow, no one in their right mind could be persuaded that those children deserved to die. At worst, they might have been spoiled. They might have been sheltered from the world. But that was not their doing, and it does not amount to a crime. There are those who despised the Tsar long before he arrived in Sverdlovsk, but people will always despise someone who has more than they do, and it is easier to hate something at a distance. But when the Tsar arrived with his family, they were forced to see him as another human being. To kill a family who stand unarmed before you requires something more than hate. It is why, in the stories they have told you, the children were allowed to go free.”

  “So you do not believe anyone survived?”

  “If they had,” replied Kropotkin, “I think we would have heard from them by now. Of course, there is one other possibility.”

  “And what is that?”

  “That the Tsar had received another offer of escape.”

  “But the only messages getting through to the Tsar from outside came from you.”

  “I don’t mean from outside. I mean from inside the Ipatiev house.”

  “You mean the Cheka?”

  “Maybe they planned to kill him while he was trying to escape, just like they did with the Grand Duke Mikhail.”

  Pekkala shook his head. “The Tsar was not killed while trying to escape.”

  “Then perhaps someone in the Cheka guards really did intend to rescue him.”

  “To me,” said Pekkala, “that seems almost impossible.”

  “Do you really find it so incredible that someone would go to such lengths to keep the Tsar alive?” asked Kropotkin. “After all, your own survival is nothing short of miraculous.”

  “Yours as well,” added Pekkala. “The Communists must have suspected you of collaborating with the Whites. And yet they still made you their chief of police in Sverdlovsk.”

  “The Reds needed someone who could keep the peace,” explained Kropotkin. “At the time, they couldn’t afford to be picky. Since then, they have not seen fit to get rid of me. But that day will come. The only way to have a future in this country is to have no past. That is a luxury neither you nor I possess, and sooner or later we will pay the price for it.”

  “What will you do when they decide that they no longer need you, Kropotkin?”

  Kropotkin shrugged. “My line of work might change, but the things I care about, the things for which I am prepared to risk my life, will not.”

  “To the people running this country, that makes you a dangerous man.”

  “Not half as dangerous as you, Inspector Pekkala. I am a man of flesh and blood. I can be made to disappear without a trace. But getting rid of you”—Kropotkin smiled—“now that would take some doing.”

  “You talk as if I’m bulletproof,” said Pekkala, “which, I can assure you, I am not.”

  “Not you,” replied Kropotkin, aiming a finger at Pekkala, “but that.”

  Pekkala realized Kropotkin was pointing at the emerald eye badge, visible now since the soaked lapel of his coat had been turned up. “Even though your life can be snuffed out in an instant, the Emerald Eye is already the stuff of legend. It cannot simply be dismissed out of hand, and the truth is, they do not want to dismiss it. They need you, Pekkala. They need your legendary incorruptibility—just as the Tsar did before them. Most legends have the luxury of being dead, but as long as you remain alive, you are as dangerous to them as you are valuable. The sooner you are gone, the safer they will feel.”

  “Then they will not have long to wait,” Pekkala told him. “As soon as this case has been solved, I am leaving the country forever.”

  Kropotkin sat back in his chair. He tapped the end of a pencil against his thumbnail. “I hope that is true, but what they have in you, they will not want to lose. They will do everything they can to keep you here, where they can still control your fate. If they succeed, everything you have worked for will be lost and you and I will find ourselves on opposite sides in this war.”

  “I have no wish to become your enemy,” said Pekkala.

  Kropotkin nodded. “Then, for both our sakes, let us hope that when the time comes you will make the right choice.”

  Days went by, while Pekkala lingered in his cell, waiting for the interrogations to begin.

  Food was delivered once a day through a sliding panel just beneath the peephole. He received a bowl of salty cabbage soup and a mug of tea. Both the bowl and the mug were made of such soft metal that he could crumple them in his fist as if they had been made of clay.

  After the food was taken away, two guards escorted him to a toilet. One guard stood in front and one behind. Only the guard behind him spoke. “If you step to the left. If you step to the right.” The guard did not finish his sentences. He did not have to. Instead, he reached from behind and tapped the cold metal barrel of a gun against Pekkala’s cheek.

  The guard in front started walking and Pekkala felt a gentle push from the guard behind.

  Thick gray carpet covered the prison floors. The guards’ boots were soled with felt. Except for the quiet commands issued by the guards, the silence at Butyrka was complete.

  They led him down a windowless corridor, lined with doors, to a room with a hole in the middle of the floor and a bucket of water set beside it.

  Minutes later, he was on his way down the hall again, bare feet padding on the carpet. He stumbled back into his cell.

  He couldn’t sleep. All he could do was slump into a kind of semiconsciousness. His knees, crunched against the door, grew permanently numb. He lost all feeling in his feet.

  He had not been prepared for the waiting. It grated on his nerves until his whole mind had frayed like the tatters of a flag left flapping in a hurricane.

  With no glimpse of the outside world, he soon lost track of how long he had been in the prison.

  Using his thumbnail, Pekkala made a small groove in the wall to show when the food came. He noticed other scratches on the walls, similar to his own, which also seemed to have been made with a fingernail. There were several different sets, one with over a hundred marks. The sight of that filled him with dread. He knew he could not last a hundred days in this cell.

  On what he imagined was his twenty-first day at Butyrka, the guards escorted Pekkala to a different room, in which there were two chairs, separated by a small metal-topped desk.

  He had been naked since his first hour at the prison, but now one of the guards handed him a set of beige-colored pajamas made from thin, musty-smelling cotton. The bottoms had drawstrings at the ankles but not at the waist. From then on, one of Pekkala’s hands was constantly occupied with holding up his trousers.

  The guards left, closing the door behind them.

  A minute later, an officer entered the room, carrying a small briefcase. He was of medium height, with a pocked and freckled face, yellowy-green eyes, and a t
angle of thick black hair. Although his uniform fitted him, he did not seem at ease in it, and Pekkala guessed he had not been wearing it for long.

  The officer opened the briefcase. From it, he removed Pekkala’s Webley, which he had been carrying at the time of his arrest at Vainikkala. The man held up the gun, examining it carefully. His thumb accidentally touched the button for loading the Webley and the barrel of the gun folded forward suddenly, exposing the chambers of the cylinder. The officer was startled and almost dropped the gun.

  Pekkala had to stop himself from lunging forward to catch it, to keep the Webley from falling to the floor.

  The officer caught the gun just in time. Hurriedly, he replaced it in the briefcase. The next thing he removed was the emerald eye. With the badge resting on his fingertips, the man tilted it back and forth so that the gemstone caught the light. “Your enemies call you the monster of the Tsar.” The man replaced the badge inside the case. “But you do not look like a monster to me.” Lastly, he removed Pekkala’s book. He flipped through it, staring without comprehension at the words of the Kalevala. Then he dropped that, too, back where he had found it.

  He cleared his throat several times before he spoke again. “Did you know that Finland has declared its independence from Russia?”

  Pekkala had not known. The news shocked him. He wondered how his father, such a loyal supporter of the Tsar, must be feeling.

  “As you see,” continued the officer, “from these things which we have found in your possession, we know exactly who you are, Inspector Pekkala.” He spoke in a voice so quiet that it seemed almost timid.

  “Georgia,” replied Pekkala.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Georgia,” Pekkala repeated. “Your accent.”

  “Ah, yes, I am from Tiflis.”

  Now Pekkala remembered. “Dzhugashvili,” he said. “Josef Dzhugashvili. You were responsible for a bank robbery in 1907 which left over forty people dead.” He could hardly believe that a man he had once hunted as a criminal was now sitting before him, on the other side of an interrogator’s table.

  “That is correct,” said Dzhugashvili, “except that now my name is Josef Stalin and I am no longer a robber of banks. Now I am chief advisor to the People’s Commissariat.”