by Thomas Swan
“I will pay you with food. Food enough to keep you and your son well fed until the ice road opens.”
“Do I look like a complete fool?” Karsalov pushed his chair away noisily. “I’ve asked you to go.”
Pavlenko’s smile was unconvincing. He tapped the cigarette case twice more on the table, then reached inside his heavy coat as if to put it away. When his hand reappeared it was holding a long-barreled revolver. It was Russian-made, heavy and menacing.
“Comrade Karsalov—”
“Don’t call me by that fucking word.”
“Mister Karsalov,” Pavlenko said with oily politeness. “I have offered to take the Czar’s egg in exchange for bread, meat, and sugar . . . food enough to keep you and your son alive until the Germans are driven away.”
“I heard your damned offer,” Karsalov said, “but I don’t have the Czar’s egg, or anything else that belonged to him.”
The room was lit by an electric light in a frosted globe suspended over the table, and another, dimmer bulb in a floor stand next to the bed. Pavlenko got to his feet and went over to the bed. He pulled away the blanket and pointed the gun directly behind Vasily’s ear.
“Put the egg on the table or I will save your son from the agony of starvation.”
“You won’t shoot a helpless child,” Karsalov said.
“Two thousand children die every day in this city. Another one?” He laughed. “It’s quite simple—squeeze slowly—”
“It’s here, I’ll get it!” Karasalov yanked open a cupboard door and reached in behind a stack of bowls and brought out the box, now wrapped in newspaper, tied with a heavy cord. He put it on the table.
“Unwrap it,” Pavlenko said.
Karsalov began to untie the cord, doing it slowly, his eyes on Pavlenko and the revolver. “I was saving it for the children,” he said, visibly shaken. “It belongs to them. I promised my wife they could have it when the war was over, when it would be worth something again.”
“Hurry,” Pavlenko said, watching impatiently. He edged toward the table.
Karsalov took the last of the paper away. “Don’t take it, please, I don’t want your damned food.”
Pavlenko said, “Open it.”
Karsalov opened the box and took out the Imperial egg. He glanced at Pavlenko, then put it on the table and stepped back.
Pavlenko came forward, the revolver in his right hand, his left reaching out to take hold of the Imperial egg. He turned to Karsalov, “Show me how it opens, I—”
He twisted his body sharply, trying to become a small target, desperately bringing up the gun he had failed to keep trained on Karsalov. But too late. Karsalov shot twice, putting two bullets through Pavlenko’s magnificent coat and into his chest. It was Felix Yusupov’s pocket Browning, the pistol that had failed to kill Rasputin. Karsalov had resurrected it after his wife had been ambushed and killed. He had cleaned it and put new shells in the cartridge and had been carrying it with him, tucked under his belt.
Later, Karsalov draped Pavlenko’s arm over his shoulder, then, half carrying, half dragging, took the body onto the street and lay it in the doorway of a bombed-out apartment building. Pavlenko’s death was likely to go unnoticed, remembered only by a survivor if indeed there was one to notice he was missing. Karsalov wrapped himself in the warm, heavy coat. In one of the pockets he found an envelope stuffed with food ration cards. He took two of them. They would replace the cards that had been stolen when Marie had been murdered.
No question about it. In the agony of old Petersburg’s starvation, Pavlenko had gone into the food business.
Chapter 3
TALLINN, ESTONIA, NOVEMBER 23, 1963
An early morning wind rushed in from the Gulf of Finland, blowing icy gales over the capital, auguring a day of sleet and supreme darkness in a city the sun would not visit frequently until April. But to Vasily Karsalov, the bleak weather could not spoil his high spirits, and he walked briskly from his post at the naval station to the hospital and to the maternity ward, where at the fourth partition along the outer, windowed wall, he pulled away the curtain and found his wife nestling their hours-old son, born a few minutes past midnight, exactly two hours after the sensational announcement that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. Vasily bent over his wife and kissed her, then knelt to better see the tiny infant that he had decided on his walk to the hospital would be named Mikhail.
“He’ll be handsome, like you,” Anna Karsalov whispered. She was no more than twenty, her skin soft as the babe’s, her hair a pale yellow, her pretty face in happy repose. Vasily Karsalov kissed her again, his breath hot and strong from too much celebration brandy. Anna was right, her husband was handsome, with light brown hair, a wide, strong face, determined mouth, and eyes that no matter how magnificently blue they were, were set a trifle too close to each other.
“I want to call him Mikhail,” he said. “You like the name, remember?”
“Not Nikolai, for your father?”
“I carry my father’s name, that is enough.” He rubbed the baby’s cheek, and said, as if to end the discussion, “Let Mikhail Vasilyovich Karsalov start fresh.”
“What was all the excitement last night?” Anna asked. “I don’t remember much . . . just the pain, then this one came. The nurse must have given me something.”
Vasily smiled. “They killed President Kennedy. In Texas, I think.”
“That’s funny?”
“Kennedy wasn’t our friend. Last year when I was with the fleet in Cuba, we were forced to back away.” He shook his head. “That wasn’t good for us.”
“You want to play at war all the time.”
Vasily ran his fingers across a row of ribbons on his chest. “I’m a navy man. It’s boring to do nothing but wait.”
Anna patted his arm indulgently and nodded. Then her eyes closed and she said, “I’m very tired.”
He kissed her again, on her lips, then sat back and stared at mother and baby until he was certain both were asleep. A final kiss, then he slowly backed away, and left the hospital.
Even before he reported to his station, it was obvious to Vasily that there had been a massive reaction to the assassination of the American president. The Baltic Fleet had been put on alert, security had been tightened to maximum readiness, and ships with six weeks’ provisions were under way to join other naval contingents in the North Atlantic. Vasily Karsalov’s immediate orders were to assist in provisioning three Krivak Class destroyers which had been placed on emergency standby. He had graduated from the Naval College in Leningrad in 1960 and following a year at sea had returned for training as a supply officer. Anna and he had been married two months before his transfer to Tallinn. His father, Nikolai Karsalov, was now a pensioner, and though not yet seventy, was in failing health, and living in Leningrad. His sister, Nina, had married and was living in Moscow. From outward appearances, Vasily was a model naval officer; hardworking and dutifully loyal to the ideals of Soviet supremacy. There was a dark side to Vasily Karsalov, however. He was a budding alcoholic and had had frequent bouts of drunkenness that occasionally erupted into brawls and outbursts of a vicious rage that went uncontrolled during an alcoholic blackout. There had been warnings and he was, at the ripe old age of twenty-three, in jeopardy of disciplinary action or discharge if his behavior did not change.
The new father was in no mood for good conduct, but rather for a good time. He would host a small party in his miniature apartment and celebrate the birth of his son and the death of the criminal American president.
Vasily invited two fellow officers, Lieutenants Leonid Baletsky and Oleg Deryabin. He had also asked Sasha Akimov and Artur Prekhner. Akimov, at thirty-eight, was the oldest and held the rank of starshiy michman, or chief warrant officer, and was a veteran of the Soviet-German war. He was a small, round man, surprisingly agile, with an agreeable disposition. Akimov had become Vasily’s mentor, teaching him the fundamentals of procuring basic staples as well as going to extreme measures to find
luxurious provisions for the higher-ranking officers and the steady flow of gray-suited officials whose only role in life seemed to be to travel from one military base to another and fill out endless forms and eat Scottish beef and drink American bourbon.
Artur Prekhner was the only civilian in the party of five, and had come from Leningrad at Vasily’s urging. Years before, Prekhner and Vasily had been neighbors, and though Prekhner was ten years older, a close friendship had developed between the two men. At the time, Prekhner was a mid-level functionary in the vast bureaucracy that was responsible for supplying food and clothing to the state-owned shops and markets. From the same commissaries, supplies were shipped to military bases in the region. Into the naval base in Tallinn, Vasily brought in frozen meat, powdered milk, sugar, and American liquors. The list would grow, they agreed. Just weeks earlier, an order for fifteen hundred pounds of beef never left the food lockers, yet payment was made. It was an oversight, but Prekhner saw it, and so did Vasily. They had stumbled onto a way to divert valuable foodstuffs for their own purpose. All that was needed was for Vasily to approve the invoices and order additional quantities to cover the shortages. Prekhner knew where to find willing buyers.
While they had worked together for only six months, Vasily Karsalov, Baletsky, and Akimov had become a team and were good friends. Leonid Baletsky, somewhat older at twenty-eight, was a pleasant, easygoing sort. The same could not be said of Oleg Deryabin, a recent transfer and somewhat of an enigma.
Deryabin was twenty-four, though he seemed older. He was a man of medium height, thick through the chest and muscular, with reasonably handsome features and deep-set eyes that were dark and inquiring. He wore a small smile at all times, as if only he had caught the humor of a story or knew the answers that no one else could supply. He had a rich, resonant voice, and had a sharp wit to go with a sharp tongue. He had made himself popular with his fellow officers in quick order. But with a reservation. He could be, and often was, intimidating. Perhaps it was the man’s supreme self-confidence. Or the occasional flash of a wickedly strong temper. Even so, he could be good company.
A seemingly endless round of toasts began, each man finding some insignificant wrinkle to drink to; all related to the fact that Vasily Karsalov was a new father, that his son’s name was to be Mikhail, and that Anna was a beautiful mother. When those subjects were exhausted, new toasts were proposed to celebrate Kennedy’s death, including rumors and suggestions of rumors surrounding conspiracies to shoot the young president by the Cubans, Chinese, Israelis, and a coalition of Italian-American mafiosi.
To a man they agreed that the Kremlin had overreacted to the assassination, though none would express surprise if there had been Soviet influence (to which they also drank). As the liquor and wine flowed, the toasts grew more frivolous: a salute to the memory of Lenin’s mistresses, or to Stalin’s death from syphilis. Finally, Vasily proposed a toast to end the toasts and begin a game of cards.
Briefly, there was no further drinking, and they began to play preference, a game at which four usually played with one sitting out on each hand. The stakes were nominal and an even flow of wins and losses kept the players in a relaxed mood, the emphasis more on good-natured bantering than on competition. It went along that way for half an hour until Vasily challenged Baletsky over a hand he was certain he had won. Both had started to drink heavily again.
“I should have won,” Vasily repeated, his words slurred.
“Do you think he printed the fucking cards?” Deryabin challenged.
“Play 21 if you think I’m cheating,” Baletsky said. “You were opening a bottle when you should have been watching.”
Vasily tossed the cards to Akimov. “Deal, old man.”
Akimov laughed. “Old man? I’m not forty but I can still whip your ass on the wrestling mat.”
“Deal,” Vasily repeated, downed his vodka and poured another.
The game changed to poker and everyone played. When the deal had gone around the table, Deryabin had won three of five hands while Vasily had been shut out. After the next round, Deryabin continued to be the big winner, Vasily the only loser.
Artur Prekhner cautioned his friend. “Take a break, Vasily, you’re in a bad run of cards.”
Vasily waved his hands impatiently, signaling for Akimov to deal, then he emptied his pockets, putting all of his money beside a fresh drink. Another round was played, Vasily did not win. But on the next hand, he won a small pot and jubilantly raked in the kopeks. “Who’s having a bad run?” he chided Prekhner.
But for the next half hour, Vasily, aided by his own sloppy play, proved that Prekhner had been correct. With his money gone, he sat disconsolately, grumbling that his poor luck had started when he had been cheated out of a winning hand two hours earlier. The others continued, warming to more spirited competition, the stakes growing inevitably larger, rubles replacing kopeks on the table. All were drinking, all except Deryabin, who was content to keep a glass of wine next to his growing stack of rubles, sipping only occasionally from it.
A half hour past midnight, an intense feeling of nausea drove Vasily out of his apartment. The cold air might set him right, and indirectly it did, as he felt no constraint to hold in the rumbling sickness, and he vomited a huge volume of food and vodka, mercifully and tentatively, denying his bloodstream any further rush of alcohol. Immediately he considered himself sober, a preposterous surmise, but he was emboldened to return to the cards and redeem his losses. It was a fatal judgment, one from which he would never fully recover.
Resuming his seat at the table, Vasily put his wristwatch in front of him and announced that it was worth forty-six rubles, but he would accept forty. It was passed around and the highest offer was twenty-eight rubles from Leonid Baletsky, who said he made the offer in good faith and to prove he had honestly won the disputed hand. The fact that Baletsky was approaching complete inebriation may have had some additional influence on his offer. Vasily accepted the money, and Baletsky put the watch on his wrist, mumbling something to the effect that his old watch was broken and he had been saved the bother of buying a new one.
To everyone’s surprise, Vasily won the next three hands; none were large wins, but wins were wins and good for a damaged ego. The next hand—they were now playing straight five card draw—was a large pot, more than forty rubles, and won by Deryabin. Vasily was back to the money he’d been paid for his watch. Then, in less than five minutes, he was reduced to four rubles. Perspiration gathered on his forehead and above his mouth. He filled a large glass with wine and drank it all in one voracious gulp.
It was Deryabin’s deal. Vasily was dealt five high cards that caused his spirits to soar and his hands to shake. He drew two cards, making four jacks. All five remained for the first round of betting, Prekhner dropped out on the second, and Baletsky on the third. Vasily’s money was gone, but he continued, taking rubles from the pot and piling them up in front of him, accounting for all of his wagers. Akimov dropped out, leaving Deryabin and Vasily. They continued to raise each other, until, finally, Deryabin said Vasily could no longer continue to bet unless he proved he could settle his debt to the pot in the event he lost. It was a challenge that Vasily took as an affront to his honor.
“If I lose, do you doubt I’ll pay up?”
The usual little smile was on Deryabin’s lips, but there was no humor in his voice. “You may be ordered out of here tomorrow and we’ll never see each other again. Gambling debts are paid with rubles, not with words.”
“First, you have to win.”
“Are you calling for my hand?”
“One more raise. Twenty rubles.”
Deryabin’s smile vanished. “I’ll bet the twenty . . . after I see your twenty.”
Vasily looked into the eyes of the others; his asking for help, theirs refusing. He stood and stared down at Deryabin. “You’ll see the twenty, and twenty more.” He disappeared into an adjoining, tiny bedroom. Baletsky stared at the others, muttering that it was time to go home.
Then he staggered from the room, saying he was going to take a piss. Akimov began to sort the money in preparation for counting it. Prekhner lowered his head and shook it sadly. Deryabin stood, fidgeting nervously. Then he sat again. He swept all of the discards into a pile, shuffled them, then stacked the cards neatly. Prekhner watched. Vasily returned with a package wrapped in old newspaper.
“My father gave me this, it was owned by—” He stopped abruptly, then went on. “Two men have died because of it.” He tore away the paper and put the box on the table. He opened it and took out the Imperial egg and set it in front of Deryabin.
“What is it?” Deryabin asked.
“An Imperial Easter egg,” he said, the words slurred, “made by Fabergé for Czarina Alexandra Feodorovna.”
Deryabin cradled the egg in his hands, eyeing it skeptically. “If it was made for the Czar, how did your father get hold of it?”
“That’s not important. It belongs to me now.”
“What’s it worth?”
“Hundreds . . . thousands. You can see there are diamonds and two rows of rubies and emeralds, and inside there are pearls.” Vasily took the egg and opened it. “Two dozen pearls, and this—” He took out the enameled portrait of Nicholas and Alexandra. “The frame and easel are made of gold.”
“Remember to count the rubles in front of Vasily,” Deryabin reminded Akimov.
The others watched as Akimov separated and sorted the notes by their amount, recording numbers on a piece of paper. “Two hundred and eighty-six rubles,” he announced.
“That’s three months’ wages,” Baletsky said.
Vasily placed the egg squarely in front of Deryabin. “There are my damned twenty rubles. Where are yours?”
Deryabin had been the only winner, but now all of his winnings and nearly all the money he had brought with him was on the table. To lose meant he would live frugally for the next month. He studied the Imperial egg for several minutes, then, holding his cards inches away, looked at them once more with the careful concern of a banker. Two ten-ruble notes came from a pocket.