Red Icon

by Sam Eastland

  ‘And this will accomplish what exactly?’ Kirov demanded scornfully.

  ‘It wards off the fleas,’ explained Zolkin. ‘I could easily make one for you. Just find me another drop of mercury . . .’

  ‘No, thank you,’ Kirov answered flatly. ‘There is enough bizarre behaviour around here with Pekkala sleeping on the floor. I’ve no intention of encouraging any more.’

  ‘And you, Inspector?’ asked Zolkin.

  But Pekkala, lying stretched out on the floorboards, his boots still on and his hands folded serenely across his stomach, had already fallen asleep.

  The next morning, Kirov was covered with red welts.

  Zolkin, on the other hand, had none. Instead, lying all around him on the bed were dead fleas which, drawn by the smell of the tea, had bitten into the handkerchief, ingested the mercury, and perished.

  Pekkala, having chosen the floor, was similarly left alone, either because of having chosen to sleep on the floor or, as Kirov suggested, because of some Finnish spell he had cast upon the Russian fleas.

  ‘Next time, perhaps, Major,’ said Zolkin cheerfully, as he untied the handkerchief from his neck and tucked it away in his pocket.

  ‘Stay away from me, you hobgoblin!’ growled Kirov, scratching at the bites, which dotted his chest and arms like the constellations of an unmapped universe.

  From then on, even though the temperature dropped well below freezing at night, they slept in open country, avoiding the taverns altogether.

  By sunset, they had reached the outskirts of Nagorskoye. With Kirov still itching from his flea bites, they pulled off the road and made camp not far from the Kobra River. They built a fire out of driftwood salvaged from the river bank and, after a meal of black bread, sausage and pickles, washed down with a bottle of kvass, they spread their blankets on the ground and were soon asleep.

  Four days after leaving Moscow, the mud-splashed Emka pulled up outside the main gates of Karaganda Prison. The front grille, which had once been silver, now wore a pale shellac of Moscow highway mud, made up of thousands of spatters, fused and overlapping until they had formed into a virtual coral reef of grime. The lights had been similarly plastered. Several times a day, Zolkin was forced to scrape the glass lenses clean with a knife.

  From a guard shack whose entrance was curtained with a piece of burlap sacking, a guard strolled out to meet them. He wore the dark blue uniform of a prison guard, with a white patent leather belt and silver buttons. His face, deeply marked by old acne scars, made him look as if he had been hewn out of pumice stone.

  Kirov rolled down his dirt-splashed window and explained the reason for their visit.

  ‘If you’re looking for Father Detlev,’ said the guard, ‘you’ll need to go around the back. That’s where we keep the fossils.’

  The section of the prison in which Father Detlev lived, along with several others of his vintage, was separated from the main compound by a narrow path that ran through a field where, in summer time, convicts grew beets and cabbages for the Karaganda kitchen. Barbed wire had been set up to keep the chickens and the pigs from rooting through the crops, but there was nothing to contain the prisoners.

  Zolkin parked the Emka outside Warder Turkov’s hut.

  The warder’s face appeared in the window and, a moment later, he emerged, huddled in his heavy coat. ‘You must be the Inspector,’ said Turkov.

  Pekkala nodded in greeting.

  On the other side, Kirov stumbled out, raised his hands above his head, stretched and groaned from the pain in his cramped legs.

  ‘I will bring you straight to Father Detlev.’ Turkov motioned for the two men to follow him. ‘Your driver can wait in my house. There’s fresh tea in the samovar.’

  He led Pekkala and Kirov towards the jumble of huts, scattered among the leafless, crooked branches of the convicts’ apple trees. ‘Please forgive the lack of formality at this end of the compound,’ he added.

  ‘A prison without fences,’ remarked Kirov.

  ‘These men are not going to escape,’ explained Turkov. ‘There is nowhere for them to go. The world they left behind when they arrived at Karaganda no longer exists. We try to make life as easy as possible for them. I have brought Father Detlev seeds to make his garden, and watercolours for the paintings that he does from time to time.’

  At that moment, Pekkala sensed he was being watched. A face, accordioned with wrinkles, peered from the doorway of a hut. As soon as the man realised that he’d been seen, he stepped back into the darkness and the door slid silently shut.

  ‘Why has Father Detlev been here so long?’ asked Kirov. ‘I thought he would have been released years ago, since it was on the Tsar’s orders that he came here in the first place. Back then, to be an enemy of the Romanovs was to be a friend of the Revolution.’

  ‘You are forgetting, perhaps, that Detlev is also a man of the Church, an organisation not favoured by the Communist Party.’

  ‘But the churches have been opened again, on the orders of Comrade Stalin!’

  ‘True,’ agreed Turkov, ‘and if his only crime had been to worship God, he might have been a free man by now. But he is not only a priest. He is also a man who destroyed one of the Church’s most sacred artefacts. So you see, Comrade Major, he made himself the enemy of both sides in this war of faith.’ Turkov came to a stop outside a hut, whose door was made from pieces of old packing crates which had once held tins of cooking oil. The collage of wording, stencilled on the splintery wood, resembled a large and partially finished crossword puzzle. He rapped on the door and stood back. ‘Father Detlev,’ he called. ‘Your visitor is here!’

  There was a shuffling inside.

  A moment later, the door swung open to reveal a small, bewildered-looking man, with weather-beaten cheeks and a haze of short grey hair protruding like splinters from his scalp. In spite of his age, he appeared strong and healthy. To greet the men, he raised one callused hand, its knuckles crooked with arthritis. In spite of the years since they had last seen each other, Detlev recognised Pekkala immediately. ‘Inspector,’ he said. ‘You said we’d meet again and here we are!’ Glancing at the bundle tucked under Pekkala’s arm, the old priest knew at once what it contained. ‘It seems I am to have more than one reunion today,’ he remarked. ‘Come inside, gentlemen. You’ve come a long way to hear my story, and I’ve waited a long time to tell it.’

  While Turkov returned to his duties, Pekkala and Kirov entered the small hut, ducking as they passed through the doorway.

  Inside the hut, it was dark and dry and warm. Dried herbs hung suspended from the rafters. As Kirov’s head brushed past a bundle of shrivelled leaves, some of them crumbled on to his shoulder. As he swept them away with his fingertips, he breathed in the scent of sage grass.

  Pekkala studied the paintings Detlev had made, using sheets of paper mounted on to wood cut from the spindly sides of packing crates. In one, Pekkala recognised the altar at the Church of the Resurrection. Several of the other paintings were of swans floating on what Pekkala identified as the Great Pond, near the Catherine Palace.

  He remembered those swans. They came each spring and lingered until late in the summer. He had always been struck by their dignity, and their solemn detachment from the affairs of men, who carried on their lives of self-obsession all around them.

  Each morning, for as long as the swans remained at Tsarskoye Selo, the Tsar would rise early for his usual breakfast of green tea and toast before making his way to the Great Pond. There, he would be met by the gardener, Liamin, who was in charge of the watercourses on the estate. Liamin would hand him a clean pair of gloves, along with a basket filled with bread crusts for the swans, which the Tsar had trained to eat out of his hands.

  Pekkala was impressed at the amount of detail Detlev had recalled from his days on the Tsarskoye Selo Estate, especially since he had nothing but memory to go by, and given the primitive tools with which he had to work.

  Father Detlev showed them to a bare table, and gestured a
t the only two chairs in the room. Detlev himself sat down on a small barrel, of the type used for storing grain.

  Pekkala placed the bundle on the table and pushed it towards the old man.

  ‘There’s no need for me to see it again,’ said Detlev. ‘I glimpse the icon every time I close my eyes.’

  ‘I have a few questions,’ said Pekkala.

  ‘You came here to find out the truth,’ Detlev answered patiently, ‘and I see no reason to keep that from you any longer.’

  ‘Was this all your idea from the start?’ asked Pekkala.

  ‘My idea?’ Detlev breathed out sharply through his nose. ‘I would never have dared even to think it!’

  ‘Then who came to you with the plan?’

  ‘Rasputin!’ exclaimed the priest.

  ‘And when was this?’

  ‘One Sunday afternoon, back in June of 1915. Just as I was leaving the church, a car pulled up at the kerb. Rasputin was behind the wheel. He called my name and beckoned to me.’

  ‘Had you ever met him before?’ asked Kirov.

  Detlev shook his head. ‘I’d seen him in the church from time to time, but we had never spoken until then. He said he had something important to discuss with me and asked if I would drive with him to meet a friend of his. At first, I told him no, but he insisted. “When you meet this person,” he said, “you will know that it was wise to have done as I asked.” I had only just begun my service at the church and I knew that Rasputin was someone of great influence. He may have been a stranger to me, but his reputation was not. In truth, I was afraid to refuse his request. So I got into that fancy car and went with him.’

  ‘Where did he take you?’ asked Kirov.

  ‘We drove across the Alexander Park and stopped outside a little house on the far side of the estate. Before we even reached the door, it opened and a woman welcomed us in. I recognised her at once. It was Anna Vyroubova. I often saw her praying at the chapel. She led me into the front room and there, sitting on a chair with a blanket thrown over her knees, was the Tsarina Alexandra. At first, I was so shocked I could not even breathe. I had seen her at the church, of course, but we had never actually met. I was so flustered that I couldn’t recall what I was supposed to do in her presence, so I dropped to my knees!’

  *

  ‘You know who I am,’ said the Tsarina.

  ‘Yes, Majesty,’ whispered Detlev.

  ‘And I know I can count on your loyalty to the Tsar.’

  ‘Majesty, of course!’ Only now did Detlev raise his head and look the Tsarina in the eye. He had no idea if this was permitted, but his curiosity overwhelmed him.

  What he saw was a woman in a lavender dress with a necklace of pearls which formed three strands about her throat. The thing that struck him most about her were the eyes. They looked sad and strangely empty. Deep lines, carved by worry, had trenched themselves into the corners of her mouth and round her eyes.

  As the Tsarina returned Detlev’s gaze, her fingers tightened on the cane until the bone handle seemed to merge with her flesh. Then she turned and nodded to Vyroubova.

  Vyroubova, who had been standing off to one side, reached behind a curtain and withdrew a small painting in a jewelled frame.

  ‘ The Shepherd!’ gasped Detlev. ‘What is it doing here?’

  Before the Tsarina could answer, there was a loud popping sound from the kitchen.

  ‘What was that?’ she demanded angrily.

  At that moment, Rasputin appeared from the kitchen, carrying a bottle of champagne and several glasses wedged between his fingers.

  ‘That’s a Veuve Cliquot 1910!’ exclaimed Vyroubova. ‘I was saving that for a special occasion.’

  ‘Every day is special when you’re me,’ answered Rasputin. Then he glanced down at Detlev, who was still on his knees. ‘Is that where she put you?’ he asked the priest. ‘Or is that where you put yourself?’

  ‘Grigori!’ scolded Vyroubova. ‘Does your insolence have no boundaries at all?’

  Rasputin fixed Vyroubova with a stare. ‘I take it you won’t be joining us for the champagne.’

  ‘She’s right, Grigori,’ said the Empress, in a voice whose gentleness caught Detlev by surprise. ‘Now is not the time. Take it away.’

  Rasputin shrugged and walked back into the kitchen. A second later, they could hear the rustle of effervescence as he poured himself a glass.

  Now the Tsarina turned her attention back to the man who knelt before her. ‘You have been chosen to carry out a very important task, Father Detlev.’

  ‘I am yours to command,’ Detlev answered solemnly.

  ‘The country is in danger, and God has chosen us to bring salvation.’

  ‘But how?’

  ‘In a few days,’ explained the Tsarina, ‘ The Shepherd will be moved to the house of my dear friend Grigori.’

  ‘And you wish for me to guard it?’ asked Detlev, still confused.

  ‘No,’ Rasputin called from the kitchen, ‘she wants you to steal it from me!’

  ‘Why would I steal it?’ stammered Detlev, struggling to comprehend.

  ‘The only way to keep The Shepherd safe,’ said the Tsarina, ‘is for the world to believe it has been destroyed.’

  ‘You want me to destroy it?’

  ‘No.’ Slowly the Tsarina shook her head. ‘But I want you to say that you did.’

  ‘Say to whom?’

  Once more, it was Rasputin who answered. ‘To the police,’ he said, ‘when they come to arrest you for the crime.’

  ‘I don’t understand!’ protested Detlev. ‘You would have me confess to a crime which I did not commit? Why not just hire a thief? Why give such a task to a priest?’

  ‘Because a thief would not destroy what he had stolen,’ replied the Tsarina. ‘He would sell it to another thief. But a priest would not do this for money. He would steal the icon and destroy it, because that was what God had told him to do.’

  ‘But God has not told me!’

  ‘No,’ said the Tsarina. ‘I have. Now, Father Detlev, you may get up off your knees.’

  Detlev climbed unsteadily to his feet. ‘They’ll throw me in jail for this,’ he said.

  ‘They certainly will,’ she replied, ‘but I’ll see to it that you are freed again, just as quickly as I possibly can.’

  ‘But what will become of the icon if all the world thinks it is gone?’

  ‘It will be safe,’ the Tsarina told him. ‘More than that, you do not need to know.’

  ‘Nobody looks for something that isn’t there,’ added Vyroubova, replacing the icon behind the curtain.

  ‘And this will somehow save the country?’ Detlev asked incredulously.

  ‘God willing,’ said the Tsarina.

  Rasputin emerged from the kitchen, carrying a glass of champagne in each hand. One of these he handed to the priest. ‘Drink up!’ he commanded.

  Detlev stared at the glass in his hand, as if for a moment he had forgotten how it came to be there.

  ‘Do as he says,’ commanded the Tsarina. ‘It might be your last for a while.’

  Slowly, Detlev raised the glass to his mouth, wincing as the sharp, metallic-tasting bubbles crackled in his mouth.

  *

  ‘And that was the first time, and the last,’ said Detlev, ‘that I have ever tasted champagne.’

  ‘Why do you think Rasputin chose you for this task?’ asked Pekkala. He wondered if Grigori had simply spotted the priest as he drove past the church and made his decision on the spot to recruit Detlev into the scheme. If it had been anyone other than Rasputin, Pekkala would never have imagined such an impulsive decision, but his old friend had often acted entirely on instinct, and in doing so had walked a tightrope line between the genius that first drew the attention of the Tsarina and the recklessness that ultimately got him killed.

  In answer to Pekkala’s question, Detlev only shrugged. ‘Perhaps,’ said the priest, ‘because he knew that I wouldn’t dare refuse.’

  ‘And how did Rasputin ar
range for you to steal the icon?’ asked Kirov.

  ‘It was very simple,’ replied Detlev. ‘I was given a time to arrive at the house, when Rasputin himself would not be there. The door was unlocked, I walked in, and found the icon lying in an open suitcase on the table in the front room. By then, the frame had already been removed. I closed the suitcase and took it with me down the stairs.’

  ‘What happened then?’ asked Pekkala. ‘Where did you hide the icon?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ answered Detlev. ‘I walked to the Potsuleyev Bridge, as I had been told to do and there I met a man who took the suitcase from me.’

  ‘Can you describe this man?’

  ‘He was tall and imposing, with a face that belonged in a nightmare. He looked as if he had been summoned from the grave.’

  Pekkala thought back to the man who had attacked him with a butcher’s knife. ‘Had you seen him before?’ he asked.

  ‘Never,’ answered Detlev, ‘and thankfully never again.’

  ‘Did he say anything to you?’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Detlev. ‘He said that when the police asked me what I had done with the icon, I should tell them to look in the pavilion on the island of the Lamskie pond on the Tsarskoye Selo estate. And that, you will recall, Inspector, is exactly what I told you when we spoke at Okhrana headquarters all those years ago.’

  Pekkala recalled how, after receiving that information from Detlev, he had rowed across the pond to the pavilion. There he had discovered the charred remains of a frame which had once been inlaid with intricate silver filigree and semi-precious stones. Of the icon itself, nothing but ashes remained.

  ‘What did you do then?’ asked Kirov.

  ‘I returned to the church, knelt before the altar and prayed. One hour later, the police arrived. There was no trial. I never saw a judge. Within a week, I had been sent here to Karaganda, and I have been here ever since.’