by Sam Eastland
That evening, at the Lappeenranta railyard, Pekkala stowed away on a freight train bound for Helsinki. The following morning, he woke to find that the train had reached the city. Climbing down from the wagon, he pulled a straight-edge razor from his coat, rubbed a handful of snow across his face and shaved. Then he made his way to the house of Anna Vyroubova.
Vyroubova’s escape from the Bolsheviks had been nothing short of miraculous. After her arrest by soldiers of the Provisional Government, she was eventually released, only to be arrested again after the Bolsheviks had taken over. She managed to slip away from her guard while being transported through the streets of Petrograd to Kronstadt Prison, where she would, almost certainly, have been shot. For more than a year, she eluded the Cheka by living with Romanov sympathisers. Some of her hiding places were little more than huts out in the forest. Eventually, in the winter of 1920, she was taken by sledge to Finland, across the frozen waters of the Baltic.
It was many years before Pekkala learned what had become of Anna Vyroubova and even though the two of them had rarely seen eye to eye during their days among Romanovs, he was glad to know she had survived. Almost everyone else from that small circle had been hunted to extinction by Dzerzhinsky and his Cheka.
After receiving permission to settle in Finland, which had only recently declared its independence from Russia, Vyroubova had taken the vows of an orthodox nun, a move calculated to separate herself from her past and, with luck, to avoid a bullet from one of Stalin’s numerous assassins.
Now she owned a small, white house with navy-blue shutters, located in the suburbs of Helsinki. Due to the injuries Vyroubova had sustained in the train crash before the Revolution, which had left her partially crippled, she had been allowed to live in her own place, instead of at a convent, and whatever duties her new station might have required of her seemed to have been largely overlooked by the Church.
For a while, Pekkala lingered at a bus stop across the road, studying the building, to see if it was under observation, or being guarded. But no one came or went, and he saw nothing to indicate that anyone was keeping an eye upon the place.
Satisfied, he crossed the road and knocked upon the door.
A lace curtain flicked in a downstairs window, but Pekkala had placed himself where he knew he could not be seen until the door had actually been opened.
There was a sound of two locks being unfastened, and then the door slid open a crack. Vyroubova’s plump, moon-shaped face peered out into the street.
‘Anna,’ Pekkala said quietly.
For a second, she only stared at him uncomprehendingly. Then a look of astonishment flashed in her eyes as she realised who it was. ‘You!’ she spat, and tried to slam the door.
Pekkala jammed his foot in the way. ‘I only want to talk,’ he explained.
‘I have nothing to say!’ shouted Vyroubova, and she fled back into her house.
Pekkala followed her in. ‘Anna, if you’ll just let me explain.’
Vyroubova reached the dresser in the living room, snatched up a letter opener and brandished it at him. ‘Have you come to kill me? Is that why you are here, Pekkala?’
‘Of course not,’ he replied. ‘What possible reason would I have for doing that?’
‘I don’t know, but that doesn’t mean you haven’t got one.’
‘I have come a long way,’ said Pekkala, ‘and at considerable risk, considering that Finland and Russia are still at war, to ask for your help with a matter which involves some of our mutual friends.’
‘Our mutual friends are dead!’ spat Vyroubova.
‘But their reputations are not,’ answered Pekkala, ‘and what I have to say concerns not only theirs but yours, as well. Anna, The Shepherd has been found.’
Until that moment, Vyroubova had continued to brandish her letter opener at Pekkala. But now she hesitated. ‘Where?’ she asked.
‘In the coffin of a priest in Germany. I’m trying to find out how it got there.’
With a grumble of resignation, Vyroubova tossed the letter opener back on to the dresser, whose black-lacquered surface had been inlaid with chips of abalone shell arranged into bouquets of flowers. ‘If you want to find out what happened to the icon,’ she muttered as she hobbled over to a chair padded with a well-worn cushion, ‘why don’t you ask the man who took it?’
‘I have already spoken to Father Detlev,’ answered Pekkala. ‘I found him in the Karaganda Prison, where he has spent most of his life because of this.’
‘What happened to Detlev is regrettable.’ Vyroubova sighed. ‘But that was never a part of the plan. The Tsarina was going to have him released, but in the end, there was no time. Everything happened so quickly in those first days of the Revolution.’
‘Father Detlev explained what the Tsarina told him to do. What I came here to find out is why.’
‘Because she wanted peace!’ shouted Vyroubova. ‘For herself and for her country. By 1915, the Tsarina had reached the conclusion that Russia could never defeat the combined forces of Germany and Austria-Hungary. The only hope for our country, she told me, was for Russia to make peace. And the sooner it happened, she believed, the better our chances for making that peace on our own terms.’
‘Did the Tsar know about this?’
‘No!’ snorted Vyroubova. ‘And that was the problem. He could not know. Even to speak of such things amounted to treason. The Tsar had taken an oath to fight on as long as a single enemy soldier remained on Russian soil. By the following year, he had taken over command of the entire military. If word leaked out that his own wife had been colluding with the enemy, it would only have confirmed the rumours which were already circulating through the Russian court – that she, a German by birth, was more sympathetic to her own people than she was to the people of Russia.’
‘It would have spelled the end of everything,’ agreed Pekkala.
‘Exactly!’ And with that single word of agreement, the anger seemed to lessen in her voice. It was as if the burden of this secret, which had knotted around Vyroubova’s heart like the strangling roots of a vine, was finally beginning to unravel.
‘So what did the Tsarina do?’ asked Pekkala.
‘She decided to send a secret delegation to meet with representatives of the German government.’
‘Who were the members of this delegation?’
‘Lutukin,’ replied Vyroubova, ‘and Briulov.’
The faces of those two politicians glimmered into focus in Pekkala’s mind. Neither had survived the Revolution. Lutukin was dragged from his car by mutinous Cossacks and then run through with his own sabre, which he carried with him when he toured the streets of Petrograd. Briulov, after being fired by the Tsar from his post as Minister of Education, had joined an international pacifist group, based in Sweden. In 1919, he was convicted of treason by a Bolshevik tribunal. Sentenced to twenty years in the Gulags, he died while working on the White Sea Canal, and his body, along with those of thousands of other slave labourers, was buried in the cement walls of the canal. ‘Only those two?’ asked Pekkala.
‘No,’ answered Vyroubova. ‘There was also a pair of military officers. One was General Yagelsky, and the other was Naval Commodore Asikritov.’
Pekkala was surprised to hear the names, since neither had, at least publicly, shown any reluctance to wage war. Yagelsky had been with General Samsonov at Tannenberg and Asikritov had served under Admiral Kolchak in the Tsar’s Pacific Fleet at Vladivostok. These men, too, were dead. Yagelsky committed suicide when guards of Kerensky’s Provisional Government came to his house to arrest him in 1917. Asikritov, one of the top-ranking officers at Kronstadt, an island just across the river from Petrograd, was killed by his own chauffeur on the same day the Cossacks put to death the sabre-wielding Minister Lutukin.
‘And how did the Tsarina make contact with the Germans?’
‘Through her uncle, the Grand Duke of Hesse. He guaranteed their safety, provided that they could be delivered across the border. He also assemble
d members of the German government and military, who might listen to the Russian peace proposal.’
‘But how did she propose to deliver the Russian emissaries without alerting the Tsar, or anyone else, for that matter?’
‘They had to be smuggled in.’
‘By whom?’ asked Pekkala, thinking of his own journey from Moscow to Helsinki and the shadowy Hokkanen who had led him through the forest. Such guides were not impossible to find, but these men and women usually operated under the protection of one and sometimes both governments simultaneously. No border could ever be completely secured, even in wartime, and the shifting boundaries between mortal enemies were never more than porous screens, through which brave travellers might pass, provided they could find someone to show them the way.
‘I don’t know who smuggled them across the border. What I do know is that they demanded a great deal in payment.’
‘I am not surprised,’ remarked Pekkala, ‘given the risks they were taking, but surely the amount would not have been hard to come by for the Tsarina. We are talking about the one of the richest families in the world, after all, at least at the time.’
‘Normally, the money would not have been an issue,’ agreed Vyroubova. ‘Romanov bank accounts held more than enough to meet the demands of the guides, but to withdraw funds from these accounts, especially such a large amount, would not have gone unnoticed by the Tsar.’
Pekkala knew she was telling the truth. The Tsar kept a very close eye on his personal finances. He met once a month with his financial adviser to discuss the family budget, with which he was notoriously frugal. If the Tsarina had made even a modest withdrawal, questions would have been asked.
‘But the smugglers had to be paid,’ continued Vyroubova, ‘which is how we come to The Shepherd. That icon was the price they demanded.’
‘I find that hard to believe,’ said Pekkala, ‘given the importance she placed on its powers.’
‘Which only goes to show that perhaps you did not know her as well as you thought. Yes, she gave them the icon. I think she would have given more than that if it meant saving the lives of thousands of soldiers on the battlefield, German and Russian alike. If her plan had worked . . .’ Her voice trailed off.
‘What happened, Anna? Why did it go wrong?’
‘The delegations never even met,’ she explained. ‘On the way there, our emissaries first had to travel through territory which was held by the Austro-Hungarian Army. And that is as far as they got. They made it through several checkpoints, but eventually had to turn back.’
‘Because they were discovered?’
‘No, because the area through which they were travelling came under Russian attack. So you see, Pekkala, it all came to nothing. The Shepherd might as well have been burned, after all, instead of just given away.’
‘Surely these guides, whoever they were, must have known that they could never make a profit from the icon. They could never sell it, and they would have been discovered if they tried. The Shepherd was too well known.’
Vyroubova shrugged. ‘I don’t know what they were thinking. The Tsarina didn’t tell me anything about them and she warned me not to ask. It was for my own good, she said, and I believed her.’
‘How did she find them in the first place?’
‘That I do know!’ she laughed. ‘They came on the recommendation of our dear departed friend, Rasputin. He arranged the whole thing, even the theft of the icon from his house.’
‘And Father Detlev?’
‘Chosen by Rasputin himself to carry out the robbery.’
‘Did Grigori honestly think that the negotiations would work?’
‘Probably not,’ answered Vyroubova, ‘but he knew that once the Tsarina’s mind was set upon a course, she would throw her whole life into it, no matter what the cost. I think he was trying to protect her, so that when the plan failed, her good intentions would not recoil upon her head, and the heads of the Tsar and their children, as they surely would have done if news of the mission came out. The loss of one icon, precious as it may be, was a small price to pay for the lives of the people Grigori had grown to love. That’s why he chose people who knew how to keep their mouths shut. Whoever the Tsarina gave the icon to, they never breathed a word about it, at least not to me or anyone I knew. If you ask me, you’re lucky you got one word out of Father Detlev, even after all this time.’
‘For what it’s worth,’ said Pekkala, ‘I think it did him good to talk. I hope it does some good for you as well.’
Vyroubova set the tip of her cane upon the ground and rose unsteadily to her feet. ‘Maybe it will, in time,’ she told him. ‘It has taken me years to chase away the ghosts of the past, but they never stay away for long. All it needs is a word, or a sound or a smell, or,’ she jerked her chin at him, ‘the sight of a familiar face, and they all come howling back into my mind.’
‘You are not the only one with ghosts,’ Pekkala told her.
‘I did not doubt that for a second.’ In an unfamiliar moment of kindness, she reached out and touched his hand. ‘Take heart, Pekkala! Maybe one day we’ll wake up and find they’re gone for good.’
Pekkala smiled. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘but I doubt it.’
‘If the truth be told,’ replied Vyroubova, gently releasing his hand, ‘so do I.’
25 February 1945
Karaganda Prison
‘A package has come for you, Father!’ Clutching a cardboard box, Prison Warder First Class Turkov opened the gate to Detlev’s garden. With the toe of his boot, he nudged aside the priest’s pot-bellied pig, who had emerged from its straw-padded lean-to in order to see if there was anything to eat.
Detlev had been taking a nap, as he did most afternoons after his lunch. He appeared in the doorway, blinking the sleep from his eyes and his face crumpled like a piece of old brown paper.
‘This doesn’t happen every day,’ remarked Turkov as he placed the box into Detlev’s outstretched hands.
‘Not any day,’ Detlev corrected him, ‘and I see it hasn’t been opened for inspection.’
Turkov brushed aside the comment. ‘There’s nothing to worry about. We already know who it’s from.’
‘We do?’
‘Of course. Inspector Pekkala has sent it. Look here. It has a Moscow postmark. That’s where Pekkala lives, and who else do you know from Moscow?’
Detlev peered at the blurred black ovals which had covered the postage stamps. ‘But why would he have sent me this?’
‘I’m sure it’s just Pekkala’s way of saying thank you for your help with the investigation. Whatever it is, I expect it’s something nice.’ Turkov sounded as happy as if he had received the package himself.
‘Probably,’ said Detlev, and there seemed to be the faintest trace of annoyance in his voice.
‘Well, aren’t you going to open it?’ asked Turkov, smiling expectantly.
‘All in good time,’ answered Detlev. Then he turned and walked back into his house and closed the door.
‘Well I . . .’ Turkov mumbled as the smile faded slowly from his face. ‘I suppose I’ll be going then,’ he announced to the door.
Father Detlev watched him depart, peering through a crack in the door. He had always resented Turkov’s nosiness, even if his curiosity never seemed to contain any particular malice. In fact, it struck Father Detlev that he had been singled out by Turkov for better than average treatment. If their situations had been different, Detlev felt they might even have become friends. But he had learned in his years as a convict that the relationship between a prisoner and his guard could never be based on anything more than mutual mistrust. Turkov’s enquiries about Detlev’s health, his willingness to linger and converse, even the occasional present, such as a much-coveted sewing needle and thread, or an extra loaf of the dark paika bread given out to each prisoner as part of the daily rations – all these things only served to make Detlev more suspicious about Turkov’s motives.
But there was another reason why he d
id not want to open the package in front of Turkov. He did not want to share the surprise of what it contained. There were, as a rule, no surprises in his life. Even the monthly surprise inspections did not surprise him any more and he wanted this to belong to him alone.
Detlev turned back to the box, which was waiting on his kitchen table. He did not open it at first, but smoothed his hands over the paper wrapping. He admired the stamps, some depicting Lenin and Stalin, their profiles placed side by side, as if they were almost the same person. Others showed battle scenes, in which Red Army soldiers bayoneted barely human shapes beneath a red sky emblazoned with the hammer and the sickle.
The pig, whose name was Tolstyak, nudged open the door and trotted over to Father Detlev.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Detlev told the pig.
Tolstyak, who would have been just as happy to eat the box as anything it might contain, stared longingly at the package.
Detlev tore open the paper wrapping, then prised apart the flaps of the cardboard box. At first, the inside appeared to be filled entirely with straw. Detlev sank his hand into the dry, blond stalks and fished about until his fingers closed upon an object. He lifted it out, scattering straw on the floor, which the pig immediately investigated with his flat, twitching nose.
It was a small metal bottle, about the length of Detlev’s hand, sealed with a cork which had been coated with red wax. On the bottle was a brightly coloured paper label, showing the Virgin Mary set against an orange sunset, and two people kneeling before her with crutches laid upon the ground beside them. The writing on the bottle was not in the Russian alphabet, but Detlev could tell that it was in several languages. He could make out French, German and finally English, of which he spoke a little. And what he deciphered were the words ‘Lourdes Holy Water’.