Eye of the Red Tsar

by Sam Eastland

  Pekkala stood abruptly. “That’s not a bad idea,” he said, and dashed out into the courtyard.

  Kirov went to the doorway, bewildered. “What’s not a bad idea?”

  Pekkala grabbed the bicycle leaning up against the wall. Tendrils of dried pond weed still clung to the spokes.

  “What did I say?” Kirov asked.

  “If we can’t bring him to Moscow, we can bring Moscow to him. I’ll be back in one hour,” Pekkala said, mounting the bicycle.

  “Remember, that thing doesn’t have any brakes,” Kirov warned, “and the back tire is flat, as well!”

  Pekkala wobbled out into the street, on his way to Kropotkin’s office. His plan was to put in a call to the Bureau of Special Operations in Moscow and instruct them to send out a platoon of guards to ensure the safety of the Tsarevich. Even if the guards left at once, he estimated that it would take several days for them to arrive. In the meantime, they would keep Alexei hidden in the Ipatiev house with as many police as Kropotkin could spare stationed outside. Pekkala would use the days between now and then to give the Tsarevich a chance to talk, and for Pekkala to regain his trust. By the time the escort arrived from Moscow, Alexei would be ready to go with them.

  Pekkala pedaled as fast as he could. Without brakes, when he came to corners, he dragged his toes over the cobblestones in an attempt to slow down. Racing down narrow side streets, his senses filled with the tar-like smell of laundry soap, of ashes scraped from stove gratings and smoky tea brewed up in samovars lingering in the damp morning air. In picket-fenced gardens, he glimpsed bony stands of white birch, their coin-shaped leaves flickering silver to green and back to silver like sequins on a woman’s party dress.

  He was so preoccupied that he did not notice the narrow road ended in a T. There was no chance to take the corner, or even to slow down, and there, spreading out in front of him as he emerged from the side street, was the familiar sapphire blue expanse of the duck pond.

  Pekkala leaned hard on the handlebars. Jamming one heel into the ground, he skidded to a halt in a cloud of dust, barely an arm’s length from the water.

  When the dust settled, Pekkala saw a woman, standing among the reeds on the opposite bank of the pond. She held a large basket, which was filled with gray teardrop-shaped husks. She wore a red headscarf, a dark blue shirt rolled up to the elbows, and a brown ankle-length dress whose hem was slick with mud. The woman stared at him. She had an oval face with eyebrows darker than her streaked blond hair.

  “My bicycle,” explained Pekkala. “No brakes.”

  She nodded without sympathy.

  There was something familiar about the woman, but Pekkala could not place her. So much for perfect memory, he thought. “Excuse me,” he asked her, “but do I know you?”

  “I don’t know you,” replied the woman. She went back to picking through the reeds.

  Yellow monarch butterflies flew around her, their bobbing movements like those of paper cutouts dangled from pieces of thread.

  “What are you gathering?”

  “Milkweed,” the woman answered.

  “What for?”

  “They pack it into life jackets. I get good money for this.” She held up one of the gray husks and crushed it in her fist. Feathery white seeds, light as a puff of smoke, drifted out across the water.

  In that instant, he remembered her. “Katamidze!” he shouted.

  Her face turned red. “What about him?”

  “The photograph.” In the box of reject pictures, Pekkala had seen her just as she was now, by the side of this pond, that silver cloud like the ghostly blur of a face in the moment it was captured on film.

  “That was a long time ago, and he said they were purely artistic.”

  “Well, it certainly had a—” He thought about the pink splotched cheeks of the nuns. “A certain quality.”

  “It wasn’t my idea to pose naked.”

  Pekkala breathed in sharply. “Naked?”

  “That old man Mayakovsky bought the pictures, every one of them. Then he started selling them off to the soldiers. Reds when they were here, Whites when they marched in. Mayakovsky didn’t care, as long as they paid. Maybe you bought one.”

  “No.” Pekkala tried to reassure her. “I only heard about them.”

  She hugged the basket to her chest. “Well, I guess everyone has heard about them.”

  “You were standing right there.” Pekkala pointed at her. “Right there where you are now.”

  “Oh, that picture.” She lowered the basket again. “I remember now. He said he wasn’t happy with it.”

  “How well did you know Katamidze?”

  “I knew him,” she began, “but not the way people say I did. He’s gone, you know. He doesn’t live here anymore. He lost his mind. That night he went to photograph the Tsar. He said he saw them slaughtered right before his eyes. I found him hiding in his attic, talking some gibberish about how he’d come face-to-face with the Devil.”

  “Have you told this to anyone else?”

  “When the Whites were here, they came to my house. But by then Mayakovsky had sold them some pictures. I never told them I’d seen Katamidze that night, and they never asked me about it. All they wanted to know was where they could get some more photos.”

  “What happened to Katamidze after you found him in the attic?”

  “He was in a bad state. I told him I would send for a doctor. But before I could do anything to help him, he ran out of the house. He never came back. A couple of years later, I heard that he had ended up in prison.”

  “This person he came face-to-face with …”

  “Katamidze said he was a beast on two legs.”

  “But a name. Did Katamidze hear a name?”

  “He said that when the Tsar saw this man, he called out a word. Then they got into an argument, but Katamidze didn’t know what it was about.”

  “What word did the Tsar call out?”

  “Nothing that made any sense. Rodek. Or Godek. Or something.”

  Pekkala felt suddenly cold. “Grodek?”

  “That’s it,” said the woman, “and then the shooting started.”

  A suffocating weight bore upon Pekkala. With his pulse thumping in his neck, he rode back to the Ipatiev house, arriving in the courtyard just as Anton carried out a handful of dishes to wash at the pump. He had taken off his tunic. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up and his suspenders stretched across his shoulders.

  As Anton cranked the squeaky iron pump handle, a gush of water spilled out on the cobblestones, bright as mercury in the night. He sat on an upturned bucket and began to scrub the dishes with an old brush, its bristles splayed out like the petals of a sunflower. He glanced up just in time to see his brother bearing down on him. But it was too late. Pekkala towered over Anton, his face contorted with anger.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Anton asked.

  “Grodek,” snarled Pekkala.

  Anton’s face turned suddenly pale. “What?”

  Pekkala lunged at him, grabbing Anton by his shirt collar. “Why didn’t you tell me it was Grodek who murdered the Tsar?”

  The dish slipped from Anton’s hands. It shattered on the stones. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You send me to look for a murderer and all the while you know exactly who it is. I don’t care how much you hate me, you still owe me an explanation.”

  For a moment, Anton’s face remained a mask of surprise. He seemed about to deny everything. Then, suddenly, he faltered. With the mention of that name, a scaffolding of lies collapsed inside him. The mask he had been wearing fell away. In its place was only fear and resignation. “I told you we should have left.”

  “That is not an answer!” Pekkala shook his brother.

  Anton did not resist. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled.

  “Sorry?” Pekkala let go of his brother and stood back. “Anton, what have you done?”

  Wearily, the older man shook his head. “I would never
have dragged you into this if I had known about our father sending you to join the Finnish Regiment. All this time I thought it was you who made that choice. I have spent years hating you for something that wasn’t your fault. I wish I could go back and change things. But I can’t.”

  “I thought Grodek was in prison. He was supposed to be in there for life.”

  Anton stared down at the cobblestones. All his energy seemed to have gone out of him. “When the Petrograd police barracks were stormed, back in 1917, the rioters burnt all the records. Nobody knew who was in jail for what, so when they took over the prison later that same day, they decided to release all the prisoners. As soon as Grodek got out, he joined the Revolutionary Guard. Eventually, he was recruited by the Cheka. When he heard that a group of Cheka were being assigned to guard the Romanovs, he volunteered for the job. I only found out who he was when we arrived here in Sverdlovsk. I had never met him before then.”

  “And you didn’t think to tell me this?”

  “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t think you would agree to help with the investigation if you knew Grodek was out. The only way the Bureau would let me hold on to my promotion was if I persuaded you to investigate the case.”

  “And is it true? Did Grodek offer the Tsar a chance to escape when he was stationed at the Ipatiev house?”

  “Yes. In exchange for the Tsar’s gold reserves. Grodek swore that he would free the family if the Tsar would lead him to where they were hidden. The Tsar agreed. It was all worked out.”

  “And you were helping him, weren’t you?”

  Anton nodded. “Grodek needed someone to create a diversion while he led the family out of the house and drove them away in one of our trucks.”

  “And what were you supposed to get in exchange?”

  “Half of everything.”

  “And what was this diversion?”

  “Grodek and I told the other guards that we were going to the tavern. We’d been going every night, so nobody thought it was unusual. I broke into the police chief’s office and put in the call to the Ipatiev house. I said I was from the garrison at Kungur, just on the other side of the Ural Mountains. I said that the Whites had bypassed Kungur and were heading for Sverdlovsk. I told them to send all available men to set up a roadblock. Then I would join the other guards at that roadblock, saying that I had just come from the tavern. I’d tell them that Grodek was too drunk to come with me. Then I’d make sure we stayed at the roadblock as long as possible, so that Grodek would have time to free the Romanovs.”

  “If that was the plan, then why bring Katamidze into it?”

  “We knew that at least two guards would be left behind to watch the Romanovs while the others were setting up the roadblock. The Tsar was afraid that his family might be hurt while the guards who stayed behind were being overpowered. He refused to agree to the rescue until Grodek came up with the idea of having a photographer sent over. That way, he could make sure they were all gathered safely in the basement until the guards had been disposed of.”

  “But wouldn’t the guards think it was suspicious that Katamidze arrived after dark?”

  “No. The times were crazy. We received orders at all hours of the day and night. Commands issued by Moscow sometimes took six hours to reach here. By that time, it could be the middle of the night for us, but if the order said it had to be carried out immediately, that was what we had to do.”

  “So Grodek planned to kill two of your own men as part of this rescue?”

  Slowly, Anton raised his head. “Have you forgotten what you trained him to do? Grodek set up a Revolutionary cell with the sole purpose of assassinating the Tsar. And then, when those people learned to trust Grodek with their lives, he betrayed every last one of them. They all died because of Grodek, even the woman he loved. What were two more lives after that?”

  “More than two,” said Pekkala. “Because he never intended to free the Tsar, did he?”

  “The Tsar had told Grodek that the treasure was hidden nearby. He said he could lead Grodek to it that same night. Grodek’s plan was to accompany the Tsar to the hiding place, get the gold, and then kill him and the Tsarina. We discussed letting the children go free. Grodek promised he wouldn’t kill them unless he had to. Afterwards, he would say that the Tsar and the Tsarina had been shot while trying to escape. But that’s not what happened. It all went wrong.”

  “What did happen?”

  “They got into an argument. Grodek said that when he went down to the basement, the Tsar started taunting him, saying that the treasure was right there in front of him, that the Romanovs themselves were the treasure. Grodek thought the man had gone out of his mind. When he realized that the Tsar was never going to lead him to the gold, he snapped. He started shooting.”

  “Why did he spare Alexei?”

  “He knew he had to get rid of the bodies, so that it would look as if the Romanovs had escaped. Grodek wanted a hostage, in case he ran into White Army detachments and his escape route was blocked. Listen, brother, I will tell you everything I know, but right now we are still in danger.”

  “I know about the danger,” said Pekkala.

  Suddenly, Anton’s eyes widened.

  Pekkala swung around just in time to see Alexei’s boot crash into the side of Anton’s head. Anton’s eyes fluttered. His mouth locked open, teeth bared, as the pain drilled through his skull. Then he slumped back, unconscious. Blood dripped from his head, seeping into cracks between the stones.

  Alexei kicked Anton again. This time Pekkala held him back.

  “What the hell is going on?” Kirov demanded, appearing out of the dusk.

  “That is the man who helped to kill my family!” Alexei stabbed a finger at Anton. “He just confessed to it! This is the murderer you have been looking for.”

  “Is it true?” Kirov asked Pekkala.

  “Grodek killed the Tsar. My brother helped him.”

  “But I thought you said Grodek was in prison for life!”

  “He was released during the Revolution. I never knew about it until Anton told me.” Pekkala turned to Alexei. “I am now almost certain that Grodek is the one who killed the photographer Katamidze, and Mayakovsky too. He may have let you live that night he killed the others in your family, but if he feels that we are near to catching him, he won’t feel safe again until all of us are dead. Including you, Alexei.”

  “If you want me to be safe,” said Alexei, “then you can start by killing him.” He gestured at Anton, sprawled and bleeding on the cobblestones.

  “No,” replied Pekkala. “This is not the time for vengeance.”

  “The vengeance would be yours as well,” Alexei urged. “He has been working against you all along. If you won’t kill him, then let me do it. And afterwards you can take me to my father’s gold. Then I will gladly go with you to Moscow. Otherwise, I will take my chances here.”

  Pekkala thought back to the boy he had once known, his gentle nature torn away, and of the rage which had taken its place. “What happened to you, Alexei?”

  “What’s happened is that you betrayed me, Pekkala! You are no better than your brother. My family might still be alive if it wasn’t for you.”

  Pekkala felt as if a hand was closing on his throat. “Whatever you choose to believe about me, I came here to find you and to help you if I could. We are all victims of the Revolution. Some of us have suffered from it, and others have suffered for it, but in one way or another all of us have suffered. No amount of gold will ever change that.”

  A strange look came over Alexei’s face.

  It was a moment before Pekkala understood what it was. He had pitied the Tsarevich long before the fortunes of his family had turned. But now, Pekkala realized, Alexei was pitying him.

  Alexei stared down at Anton, who lay spread-eagled in a puddle of his own diluted blood. Then he pushed past Kirov and stormed inside the house.

  Pekkala sat down heavily upon the ground, as if his legs had collapsed underneath him.


  Kirov knelt down beside Anton. “We need to get him to a doctor,” he said.

  WHILE KIROV STAYED BEHIND TO GUARD ALEXEI, PEKKALA LIFTED Anton into the backseat of the Emka and drove to the police station. Kropotkin climbed in and the three traveled to the clinic of a man named Bulygin, who was the only doctor in town.

  On the way, Pekkala told Kropotkin that Alexei was now at the Ipatiev house.

  “Thank God,” Kropotkin kept repeating.

  Pekkala also explained about Grodek and requested that Kropotkin put in a call to the Bureau of Special Operations, requesting an armed escort for the Tsarevich’s return to Moscow. “In the meantime,” said Pekkala, “I’ll need as many of your police as you can spare to stand guard outside the house.”

  “I’ll see to it as soon as we have dropped off your brother at Bulygin’s.”

  “No one is to know the Tsarevich is inside, not even the policemen guarding the house.” If news got out about Alexei, Pekkala knew that the Ipatiev place would be mobbed. Even those who wished him well would pose a threat. He remembered the disaster which had taken place at the Khodynka field in Moscow on the day of the Tsar’s coronation in 1896. Crowds which had gathered to witness the occasion rushed towards tables of food which had been provided for them. Hundreds of people lost their lives in the stampede. Under the circumstances, especially with a bomb maker like Grodek still at large, the situation could be even worse.

  Bulygin was a bald man with an emotionless face and a small mouth which barely moved when he spoke. Anton was still unconscious when Bulygin laid him out on an operating table and shone a light into each of his eyes. “He has a concussion, but I see nothing life-threatening. Let me keep him here for observation. He should be conscious again in a matter of hours, but if his condition changes for the worse, I will let you know immediately.”

  Returning to the Ipatiev house, Pekkala dropped Kropotkin off at the police station.

  “I have seen your brother take a lot of beatings,” Kropotkin told him. “One more won’t do him any harm. I’ll keep an eye out for this man Grodek. In the meantime, let me know if you need any more help.”