Eye of the Red Tsar (7 page)

“It was not a guess, Excellency. There are twelve buttons on your tunic, including the buttons on your cuffs.”

The Tsar’s head snapped up. “Good heavens, you are right! And what is on those buttons, Pekkala? What crest did you see?”

“No crest at all, Excellency. The buttons are plain.”

“Hah!” The Tsar walked into the stable. “Right again!” he said
.

Now the two men stood only an arm’s length apart
.

Pekkala recognized something familiar in the Tsar’s expression—a kind of hardened resignation, buried so deep that it was now as much a permanent part of the man as the color of his eyes. Then Pekkala realized that the Tsar, like himself, was on a path not of his own choosing, but one which he had learned to accept. Looking at the Tsar’s face was like studying his own reflection in some image of the future
.

The Tsar seemed to grasp this connection. He looked momentarily bewildered, but quickly regained his composure. “And my ring?” he asked. “Did you happen to notice…?”

“Some kind of long-necked bird. A swan, perhaps.”

“A crane,” muttered the Tsar. “This ring once belonged to my grandfather, Christian the Ninth of Denmark. The crane was his personal emblem.”

“Why are you asking me these questions, Excellency?”

“Because,” replied the Tsar, “I think your destiny is with us, after all.”

ANTON WAS STARING into the fire. “My brother gave up everything he had, but still he did not give up everything.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Kirov snapped.

“He is rumored to be the last man left alive who knows the location of the Tsar’s secret gold reserves.”

“That’s not a rumor,” said Pekkala. “That’s a fairy tale.”

“What gold reserves?” asked Kirov, looking more confused than ever. “I learned in school that all of the Tsar’s property was seized.”

“Only what they could get their hands on,” said Anton.

“How much gold are you talking about?” asked Kirov.

“Nobody seems to know exactly,” Anton replied. “Some people say there are more than ten thousand bars of it.”

Kirov turned to Pekkala. “And you know where it is?”

With a look of exasperation, Pekkala rocked back in his chair. “You can believe what you want, but I am telling the truth. I do not know where it is.”

“Well,” said Kirov, injecting his voice with authority, “I am not here to oversee a search for gold. I am here, Inspector Pekkala, to see that you obey the protocols.”

“Protocols?”

“Yes, and if you do not, I have been authorized to use deadly force.”

“Deadly force,” Pekkala repeated. “And have you ever shot anyone before?”

“No,” replied Kirov, “but I’ve fired a gun at the range.”

“And the targets. What were they made of?”

“I don’t know,” he snapped. “Paper, I suppose.”

“It’s not as easy when the target is made of flesh and blood.” Pekkala slid the report across the desk towards the Junior Commissar. “Read this report and, afterwards, if you still feel like shooting me”—he reached inside his coat, drew out the Webley revolver, and laid it on the desk in front of Kirov—“you can borrow this for the occasion.”

On the Tsar’s orders, Pekkala began work with the Petrograd Regular Police, later switching to the State Police, known as the Gendarmerie, and finishing with the Okhrana at their offices on Fontanka Street
.

There, he served under Major Vassileyev, a round-faced, jovial man
who had lost both his right arm below the elbow and his left leg below the knee in a bomb attack ten years earlier. Vassileyev did not so much walk as lurch about, constantly on the verge of falling, then righting himself just before he crashed to the floor. The artificial leg caused Vassileyev great pain on the stump of his knee, and he often removed the prosthetic when sitting in his office. Pekkala grew accustomed to the sight of the fake limb, dressed in a sock and shoe, propped against the wall along with Vassileyev’s walking stick and umbrella. The Major’s replacement right hand was made of wood with brass hinges, which he adjusted with his left hand before putting it to use, primarily for holding cigarettes. The brand he smoked was called Markov. The cigarettes came in a red and gold box, and Vassileyev kept a whole shelf of them behind his desk
.

Also on the wall behind Vassileyev’s desk, displayed in a black shadow box, was a cut-throat razor opened halfway to form a V
.

“It’s Occam’s razor,” explained Vassileyev
.

Pekkala, feeling foolish, admitted that he had not heard of Occam, whom he assumed to be a great criminal put behind bars by Vassileyev’s detective work
.

Vassileyev laughed when he heard this. “It’s not really Occam’s razor. The razor is just an idea.” Seeing Pekkala’s confusion, he went on to explain. “In the Middle Ages, a Franciscan monk named William of Occam formulated one of the basic principles of detective work, which is that the simplest explanation that fits the facts is usually right.”

“But why is it called Occam’s razor?” asked Pekkala
.

“I don’t know,” admitted Vassileyev. “Probably because it cuts straight to the truth, something you will need to learn how to do if you ever hope to survive as an investigator.”

Vassileyev liked to test Pekkala, sending him into town with instructions to walk a certain route. Vassileyev, meanwhile, would have planted people along the way, noted down advertisements pasted on walls, the headlines of newspapers hawked on the street corners by boys with floppy hats. No detail was too small. When Pekkala returned, Vassileyev would quiz the young man about everything he had seen. The point, Vassileyev
explained, was that there was too much to note down, especially when he might not even know what he was looking for. The purpose of the exercise was to train Pekkala’s mind to catalogue it all and then to permit his subconscious to sift through the information. Eventually, Vassileyev explained, he would be able to rely solely on his instincts to tell him when something was not right
.

Other times, Pekkala was instructed to evade capture by traveling in disguise across the city while different agents searched for him. He learned to pose as a cabdriver, a priest, and a bartender
.

He studied the effects of poisons, the disarming of bombs, the business of killing with a knife
.

In addition to instructing Pekkala on how to shoot a variety of weapons, all of which he had to disassemble, reassemble, and load while blindfolded, Vassileyev taught him to recognize the sounds made by different-caliber guns and even the varying sounds made by different models of the same caliber. Pekkala would sit on a chair behind a brick wall while Vassileyev, perched on a chair on the other side of the wall, fired off various guns and asked Pekkala to identify each one. During these sessions, Vassileyev was rarely without a cigarette wedged between his wooden fingers. Pekkala learned to watch the thin gray line of smoke rising from behind the wall, and the way it would ripple as Vassileyev bit down on the cigarette, just before he pulled the trigger of the gun
.

At the beginning of his third year of training, Vassileyev called Pekkala into his office. The artificial leg was on the desk. Using a chisel, Vassileyev had begun to hollow out the solid block of wood from which his prosthetic limb had been constructed
.

“Why are you doing that?” Pekkala asked
.

“Well, you never know when you might need a hiding place for valuables. Besides, this damned thing is too heavy for me.” Vassileyev set down the chisel and carefully swept the wood shavings into his palm. “Do you know why the Tsar chose you for this job?”

“I never asked him,” replied Pekkala
.

“He told me that he chose you because you have the closest thing to
perfect memory as he has ever seen. And also because you are a Finn. To us Russians, the Finns have never quite seemed human.”

“Not human?”

“Warlocks. Witches. Magicians,” explained Vassileyev. “Do you know that many Russians still believe the Finns are capable of casting spells? That’s why the Tsar surrounded himself with a regiment of Finnish Guards. And that is why he picked you. But you and I both know that you are not a magician.”

“I never claimed to be one.”

“Nevertheless,” replied Vassileyev, “that is how you are likely to be seen, even by the Tsar himself. You must not forget the difference between who you are and who people believe you to be. The Tsar needs you even more than he realizes. Dark times are coming, Pekkala. Back when I got blown to bits, crooks were still robbing money from banks. Now they have learned how to steal the whole bank. It won’t be long before they are running the country. If we let them get that far, Pekkala, you and I will wake up one day and find we are the criminals. And then you’ll need the skills I’ve taught you just to stay alive.”

THE NEXT MORNING, as red streamers of dawn unfurled across the sky, Pekkala, Kirov, and Anton climbed into the Emka staff car.

The houses all around were still shuttered, their occupants not yet emerged. The slatted shutters made the buildings look as if they were asleep, but there was something sinister about them, and each man felt that he was being watched.

Kirov got behind the wheel. Having stayed up half the night reading the secret report, the young Commissar now seemed in a state of total shock.

Pekkala had decided that they should proceed directly to the mine shaft where the bodies had been dumped. According to Anton, who had the place marked on his map, the mine was on the outskirts of Sverdlovsk, approximately two days’ drive away.

They had only been on the road a few minutes when a figure came stumbling out of an abandoned house on the outskirts of the town. It was the policeman. His clothes were filthy from hiding out all night.

The Emka skidded to a stop.

The policeman stood ankle deep in a puddle in the middle of the road. He was drunk. He moved like a man on the deck of a ship in rough seas. “I don’t care if he’s the Emerald Eye or not!” he shouted. “You’re taking me with you.” He staggered over to the car, hauled out his service revolver, and tapped the glass with the barrel of the gun.

“Everybody out,” said Anton, in a low voice.

The three men piled into the muddy road.

“We have to get out of here!” shouted the policeman. “Word is all over town that Pekkala is investigating me!” He brandished the gun back towards the rooftops of the village. “But they’re not going to wait for that.”

“We have more important things to do than put you under investigation,” said Anton, not taking his eyes from the gun.

“It doesn’t matter now!” insisted the policeman. “If I go back into town, those people will tear me to pieces!”

“You should have thought about that,” said Anton, “before you started kicking the teeth out of old men. Your job is to stay at your post. Now get out of the road and go back to work.”

“I can’t.” The policeman’s finger locked inside the trigger guard. All he had to do was clench his hand and the gun would go off. The way the man looked, he seemed just as likely to accomplish that by accident as on purpose. “I won’t let you leave me here!”

“I will not help you to desert,” replied Anton.

“I wouldn’t be deserting!” His voice rippled thinly through the still morning air. “I could come back with reinforcements.”

“I can’t help you,” said Anton. “We have other work to do.”

“This is your fault! You brought that ghost into my town”—he jerked his head towards Pekkala—“and woke up things which should have stayed asleep.”

“Return to your post,” Anton ordered. “You are not coming with us.”

The policeman trembled, as if the ground beneath his feet were shaking. Then suddenly his arm swung out.

Anton found himself staring down the blue eye of a gun barrel. His holster was strapped to his waist, but he would never be able to reach it in time. He stood motionless, hands by his sides.

“Go on,” the policeman challenged. “Give me an excuse.”

Now Kirov grabbed for the flap of his holster, drew the gun, but lost his grip on the handle. The pistol slipped through his fingers. Kirov’s empty hands clawed at nothing as the Tokarev cartwheeled into the mud. A look of terrified amazement spread across his face.

The policeman did not even notice. He kept his gun aimed at Anton. “Go on,” he said, “I’m going to shoot you either way, so—”

A stunning crash filled the air.

Kirov cried out in shock.

Anton watched in confusion as the drunken policeman dropped to his knees. A white gash showed across his neck, followed instantly by a torrent of blood which poured from the hole in his throat. Slowly and deliberately, the policeman raised a hand to cover the wound. The blood pulsed out between his fingers. His eyes blinked rapidly, as if he was trying to clear his vision. Then he tipped forward into a puddle on the road.

Anton looked across at his brother.

Pekkala lowered the Webley. Smoke still slithered from the cylinder. He slid the gun back into its holster under his coat.

Kirov retrieved his own gun from the mud. He wiped some of the dirt away, then tried to put the pistol back in its holster, but his hands were shaking so much that he gave up. He looked from Anton to Pekkala. “I’m sorry,” he said. Then he walked to the side of the road and threw up in the bushes.

The engine of the Emka was still running. Exhaust smoke puffed from the tailpipe.

“Let’s go.” Anton motioned for them to get back in the car.

“We should file a report,” said Pekkala.

“It never happened,” Anton said. Without looking Pekkala in the eye, he walked past him and got into the car.

“What should we do with the body?” Kirov wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

“Leave it!” shouted Anton.