Eye of the Red Tsar (22 page)

Pekkala took the grenade from the deep pocket inside his coat and set it on the desk.

Kropotkin stared at it. “What’s that? A gift?”

“Someone pitched it through our window last night,” Pekkala answered, “but forgot to pull the pin.”

“It’s German,” added Anton.

Kropotkin picked up the grenade. “Actually, it’s Austrian. The German stick grenades had belt clips on the cylinder here.” He tapped at the gray soup can which contained the explosives. “The Austrian ones didn’t.”

“You were in the war?” Pekkala asked.

“Yes,” replied Kropotkin, “and you learn these things when enough of them get thrown at you.”

“We were hoping you might know where it came from.”

“The Whites used these,” replied Kropotkin. “Most of the men who attacked Sverdlovsk had been in the Austrian Army before they came over to our side. Many of them were still using Austrian equipment.”

“You think it might be someone who was with the Whites?” asked Pekkala.

Kropotkin shook his head. “The man who threw this was not with the Whites.”

“So you know who might have thrown this?”

Kropotkin’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, I know exactly who threw this at you. There’s only one man insane enough to throw one of these at you who is also stupid enough not to have pulled the cord when he threw it. His name is Nekrasov. He was one of the militiamen who guarded the Romanovs before the Cheka came in and threw him out. I expect he’s still holding a grudge. As soon as the lights went on again in the Ipatiev house, he must have guessed that you people were back.”

“But why would he bother to throw it?”

“Best ask him that yourselves.” Kropotkin snatched up a pencil, scrawled an address on a notepad, tore off the sheet, and held it out. “This is where you’ll find him.”

Anton removed the paper from his hand.

“Don’t take it the wrong way,” laughed Kropotkin. “He tries to kill everybody. He just stinks at it. If Nekrasov hasn’t thrown at least one bomb at you by the time you leave, you might as well have stayed at home.”

“At least I’m not the only one they hate around here,” said Anton, when he and Pekkala were back out in the street. “Do you want me to come with you to see Nekrasov?”

“I’ll handle it,” said Pekkala. “You look as if you could use some sleep.”

Anton nodded, his eyes narrowed against the morning sunlight. “I won’t argue with that.”

THE DOOR OPENED a crack. From the darkness inside the house, a man peered out at Pekkala. “What do you want?”

“Nekrasov?”

The door swung wide, revealing a man with wavy gray hair and two days’ worth of stubble on his chin. “Who wants to know?”

“My name is Pekkala,” he replied. Then he punched Nekrasov in the jaw.

When Nekrasov woke up, he was slumped in a wheelbarrow with his arms tied to the wheel behind his back.

Pekkala was sitting on a dark green wooden crate with rope handles. The crate had been stamped with the double-headed Habsburg eagle of the Austro-Hungarian Army. Under that, in yellow letters, were the words GRANATEN and ACHTUNG-EXPLOSIVEN.

Nekrasov lived in a small, thatched-roof cottage with a white picket fence at the front. Inside, the ceiling was so low that Pekkala had to stoop, weaving among dried sprigs of sage, rosemary, and basil, tied with strands of grass and dangling from the beams. As his hand brushed them aside, the smell of the spices drifted softly through the air.

With his hands hooked under Nekrasov’s armpits, Pekkala had dragged the man through a room with an old-fashioned bench set against the wall—the kind once used as beds in these single-story houses. Neatly folded on the bench was a blue blanket, along with a dirty red pillow, revealing that the bench was still being used for its original purpose. Next to the bench, Pekkala had found the box of grenades. Seventeen of the original thirty were still inside, each one wrapped in brown wax paper. When he opened the lid of the box, the marzipan smell of the explosives wafted up into his face.

It had rained in the night and now the sun was burning off the moisture. While waiting for Nekrasov to regain consciousness, Pekkala had made himself a cheese sandwich in the man’s kitchen. Now he was eating the sandwich for his breakfast.

Nekrasov’s eyes fluttered open. Blearily, he looked around, until he caught sight of Pekkala. “What did you say your name was?”

“Pekkala,” he replied, as he finished his mouthful.

Nekrasov struggled briefly, against the ropes, then sagged and glared at Pekkala. “You could at least have tied me to a chair.”

“A wheelbarrow is just as good.”

“I see you have discovered my grenades.”

“They weren’t hard to find.”

“The Whites left them behind. How did you track me down so quickly?”

“The police chief told me about you.”

“Kropotkin!” Nekrasov leaned over the side of the wheelbarrow and spat. “He owes me money.”

Pekkala held up the grenade. “Would you mind telling me why you threw this through the window last night?”

“Because you people make me sick.”

“Which people are you talking about?”

“The Cheka. The GPU. The OGPU. Whatever you call yourselves now.”

“I am none of those things,” said Pekkala.

“Who else would go into that house? Besides, I saw one of your men go into the tavern last night. I recognized him. He’s one of the Cheka bastards who was guarding the Romanovs when they disappeared. You damned Commissar, at least have the decency to tell me the truth.”

“I am no Commissar. I am an investigator. I have been engaged by the Bureau of Special Operations.”

Nekrasov barked out a laugh. “What was their name last week? And what will it be next week? You’re all the same. You just keep changing the words around until they don’t mean anything anymore.”

Pekkala nodded with resignation. “I have enjoyed our little chat,” he said. Then he got up and turned toward the door.

“Where are you going?” called Nekrasov. “You can’t just leave me here.”

“I’m sure someone else will come by. Eventually. It doesn’t look like you receive a lot of visitors, and to judge from what Kropotkin had to say about you, even those who do come are unlikely to set you free anytime soon.”

“I don’t care. They can go to hell and so can you!”

“You and Kropotkin share a similar vocabulary.”

“Kropotkin!” Nekrasov spat again. “He’s the one you want to investigate. The Whites treated him well when they came into town. They didn’t rough him up like they did everybody else. And when the Reds came back, they made him the chief of police. He’s playing both sides, if you ask me, and a man who plays both sides will do anything.”

In the open doorway, Pekkala squinted up into the sky. “It looks as if it’s going to be a hot day.”

“I don’t care,” replied Nekrasov.

“It’s not you I’m thinking of,” said Pekkala. “It’s those grenades.” He nodded at the crate.

“What do you mean?” asked Nekrasov, staring at the ACHTUNG-EXPLOSIVEN lettering.

“That case is dated 1916. Those grenades are thirteen years old. A soldier like yourself must know that dynamite becomes very unstable if it is not stored correctly.”

“I stored them! I kept them right beside my bed!”

“But before that.”

“I found them in the woods.” His voice seemed to grow smaller.

Once more Pekkala stared up at the mare’s-tailed blue sky. “Well, good-bye.” He turned to leave.

“Go to hell!”

“As you said.”

Pekkala started walking.

“Wait!” Nekrasov shouted. “All right. I’m sorry I threw a grenade at you.”

“If I had a ruble for every time I’d heard that”—Pekkala paused and turned—“I would only have one ruble.”

“Well, what more do you want?”

“You could answer some questions.”

“Questions about what?”

Pekkala returned. He sat down again on the crate. “Is it true you were one of the militiamen who guarded the Ipatiev house?”

“Yes, and the only one who’s left alive, too.”

“What happened to the others?”

“There were twelve of us. When the Whites came, we were ordered to hold a bridge on the outskirts of the town. We tipped over a cart to block the way and took cover behind it. But that didn’t stop the Whites. They rolled up an Austrian mountain howitzer. Then they fired two rounds at us on a flat trajectory at a range of less than one hundred meters. At that range, you don’t even
hear
the gun go off. The first round killed half the people I was with. The second round hit the cart dead center. I don’t remember that. All I know is when I woke up, I was lying in the ditch by the side of the road. I was naked except for my boots and one sleeve of my shirt. Everything else had been torn off my body by the blast. One of the cart wheels was hanging from a tree branch on the other side of the road. There were bodies everywhere. They were on fire. The Whites had left me for dead and gone through. I was the only survivor of the men they sent to hold that damn bridge.”

“Nekrasov, I understand why you would hate the Whites, but I don’t see what you have against the Cheka. After all, the only thing they did was replace you as guards for the Romanovs.”

“All? That’s all they did?” Again he struggled to free himself, but the bonds were tight and he gave up. “The Cheka humiliated us! They said we were stealing from the Tsar.”

“Were you stealing?”

“It was only little stuff,” he protested. “There were nuns from the convent in town. They brought food in baskets, and the Tsar gave them books as presents in return. We swiped a few potatoes. You can go ask the nuns, if there’re any of them left. They’re closing down the convent. Canceling
God!
What do you think of that?”

“Was that all you took? A few potatoes?”

“I don’t know!” Nekrasov’s face had turned red. “Sometimes a fountain pen might disappear. Sometimes a deck of fancy playing cards. Little stuff, I’m telling you! Nobody starved. Nobody even went to bed hungry. We were told to make them feel like they were prisoners. We weren’t allowed to talk to them. Not even to look at them, if we could help it. What mattered was that the Romanovs were safe. Nobody escaped. Nobody broke in. We were to hold them until the Tsar could be put on trial, and that is exactly what we were doing.”

“And what about the rest of the family?”

“I don’t know. Nobody said anything about putting them on trial. And for certain nobody said anything about
killing
them! Then these Cheka men come in and make a big fuss over a few stolen potatoes. They throw us out and then what happens? There’s no trial! Instead, the whole family gets shot. Then, when those Cheka guards have finished blasting away at unarmed women and children, they get out of town as fast as their legs will carry them and leave us to fight off thirty thousand Whites who’ve got cannons and”—his foot lashed out at the crate—“enough grenades that they can afford to leave cases of them just lying in the woods. And that’s why I hate them. Because we did our job and they didn’t.”

Pekkala went to the front of the wheelbarrow and untied Nekrasov’s arms from the wheel.

Nekrasov did not get up. He only lay there, massaging his wrists where the rope had dug into his skin. “In a town this size,” he explained, “a man’s life can boil down to a single moment. One thing he said or did. That’s all he is remembered by. And nobody thinks about us holding our ground on that bridge until they blew us to pieces with a howitzer. All we’re remembered for is a couple of stolen potatoes.”

With the toe of his boot, Pekkala lifted up the lid of the crate. He replaced the unexploded bomb inside it. “Why didn’t you pull the pin?”

“I was drunk,” replied Nekrasov.

“No, you weren’t. I searched this house while you were out and there isn’t a thimbleful of alcohol in here. You weren’t drunk, Nekrasov.” Pekkala held a hand out to Nekrasov and helped him to his feet. “There must be another reason.”

“I’m nuts.”

“I don’t believe that, either.”

Nekrasov sighed. “Maybe I’m just not the type to butcher a person in their sleep.”

“And what about the Tsar?”

“I killed people in the war, but that was different. An unarmed man? Women? Children? The same goes for the men who were with me. If shooting the Romanovs is what needed to be done, it’s just as well the Cheka took our place.”

“So you think the Cheka murdered the Tsar?”

Nekrasov shrugged. “Who else would have done it?”

WHEN PEKKALA RETURNED to the Ipatiev house, he found Anton sitting on the back step of the house, a slab of stone worn by the countless footsteps of those who had lived and worked here before the house became frozen in time. He was eating something out of a frying pan, scooping up its contents with a wooden mixing spoon.

Kirov appeared in the kitchen doorway, the sleeves rolled up on his shirt. “Did you find the old militiaman?” he asked.

“Yes,” replied Pekkala.

“Have you placed him under arrest?”

“No.”

“Why not?” asked Kirov. “He tried to kill us last night!”

“If he had wanted to kill us, we would already be dead.”

“All the same, I think you should have arrested him,” the Commissar insisted. “It’s the principle of the thing!”

Anton laughed. “Just what the world needs more of. A boy, a gun, and principles.”

“Did he confess to killing the Tsar?” Kirov demanded.

“No.”

“There’s a surprise,” mumbled Anton.

“It’s not the Romanovs he hated,” said Pekkala. “It’s you and your friends in the Cheka.”

“Well, he can get in line like everybody else,” said Anton. “The Militia. The Whites. The Romanovs. That police chief, Kropotkin. Even those nuns at the convent hated us.”

“In fact,” continued Pekkala, “he’s convinced that the Cheka were responsible for the death of the Romanovs.”

Kirov whistled through his teeth. “The Cheka think the militia killed the Tsar. The militia think the Cheka did it. And Mayakovsky thinks they survived!”

“Well,” said Pekkala, “at least we can rule out survival.”

“What about the Cheka?” Anton asked. “Do you mean you actually believe we might have had something to do with it?”