IT WAS LATE WHEN THEY REACHED SVERDLOVSK.
The tires of the Emka popped and rumbled over the cobblestones which paved the main street running through the town. With the night mist glistening on them, the road looked like the cast-off skin of some giant snake.
Neatly planted trees formed a barrier between the part of the street intended for horses and cars and the part set aside for people going on foot. Beyond the pedestrian walkway stood large, well-maintained houses, with gardens closed off by white picket fences and shutters bolted for the night.
Anton’s orders were to present his papers to the local police chief as soon as they arrived, but the station had closed. They decided to wait until morning.
Only the tavern was open, a low-roofed place with benches set out in front of whitewashed walls. A line of old and bearded men sat with backs slumped against the wall. Large copper mugs, each with two handles, were being passed from one man to the next. Some of the men smoked pipes, cobras of smoke rising from the pipe bowls, their faces lit by the glow. They watched the Emka drive past, eyes sharpened with suspicion.
Following Anton’s directions, Kirov steered the car into a courtyard at the back of a large two-story house. High stone walls surrounded the courtyard, obscuring any view from the outside. Pekkala could tell at a glance that no one lived here now. Paint around the window frames had flaked away; weeds grew from the gutters. The courtyard walls had once been covered with mortar and painted, but chunks had fallen, revealing the bare stones beneath. The structure seemed to radiate a hostile emptiness.
“Where are we?” asked Kirov, as he climbed out of the car.
“The Ipatiev place,” replied Anton. “What we called the House of Special Purpose.”
With a key which he took from his pocket, Anton opened the kitchen door and the three men went inside. He found a switch for electric lights and flipped it on, but the dust-covered light fixtures above him stayed dark. Hanging from nails by the door were several storm lanterns, which Kirov filled from a can of kerosene they carried in the Emka. Each man carried a lantern as they passed through the kitchen avoiding a few rickety chairs tipped over on the floor. They emerged into a hallway, with narrow-planked wooden floors and a tall ceiling, from which hung the remains of a crystal chandelier. Their shadows loomed across the walls. Ahead of them was the front door, leading out into the street, and to the left, a staircase to the second floor, its bannister thick with dust. On the right, a stone fireplace dominated the front room.
Pekkala breathed the stagnant air. “Why isn’t anyone living here now?”
“The house was closed down as soon as the Romanovs disappeared. Nikolai Ipatiev, the man who owned it, left for Vienna and never came back.”
“Look.” Kirov pointed to bullet gashes in the wallpaper. “Let’s get out of here. Let’s go to the hotel.”
“What hotel?” asked Anton.
Kirov blinked at him. “The one where we are staying while we conduct the investigation.”
“We’re staying here,” replied Anton.
Kirov ’s eyes widened. “Oh, no. Not here.”
Anton shrugged.
“But this place is empty!” protested Kirov.
“It won’t be when we’re in it.”
“I mean there’s no furniture!” Kirov pointed into the front room. “Look!”
Along one wall of the empty room, tall windows looked out into the street. Curtains made of heavy dark green velvet had not only been closed, they had also been stitched together so that there was no way to open them.
Kirov pleaded with them. “There’s got to be a hotel in town, one with a decent bed.”
“There is,” said Anton, “but it’s not in the budget.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Kirov demanded. “Can’t you just wave those orders around and get us whatever we want?”
“The orders say that this is where we are to make our headquarters.”
“Maybe there are beds on the second floor,” suggested Pekkala.
“Yes,” said Kirov. “I’ll check.” He raced up the stairs, the lantern swinging in his hand, long shadows trailing after him like snakes.
“There are no beds,” muttered Anton.
“What happened to them?” Pekkala asked.
“Stolen,” Anton replied, “along with everything else. When the Ipatiev family moved out, they were allowed to bring some of their possessions-pictures and so on. By the time the Romanovs arrived, only the essentials remained. When we left town, the good people of Sverdlovsk came in before the Whites arrived and stripped the place bare. By the time they got here, there was probably nothing left worth stealing.”
Kirov stomped around upstairs. As he moved from room to room, the floorboards creaked under his weight. His curses echoed through the house.
“Where is the basement?” asked Pekkala.
“This way,” said Anton. Carrying a lantern, he led Pekkala through the kitchen to a pale yellow door, greasy fingerprints smudged around its old brass handle.
Anton opened the door.
A plain wooden staircase led down into the dark.
“Down there,” Anton told him, “is where we found the guards.”
The two men descended to the basement. On their left, at the bottom of the stairs, they came upon a coal storage chamber. A trapdoor in the ceiling opened to allow the coal to be poured in from ground level. What remained in the chamber was mostly dust, heaped in the corners. Only a few nuggets of coal lay strewn around the floor. It seemed as if even the coal had been stolen. To their right was a room which would normally have been closed off with a double set of doors, but the doors were open, revealing a space four paces wide by ten paces long, with a low, arched ceiling. Stripes of white and pinkish red papered the walls. On the pink stripes, Pekkala saw a repeating image which reminded him of a stylized design of a small tortoise. Rooms like this were used for the storage of clothing during the seasons when it was not being used.
Tidy as the place must once have been, it was now destroyed. Huge chunks of the wallpaper were missing, revealing a latticework of plaster, earth, and stone, much of which was now strewn across the floor. Bullet holes pocked the walls. Large stains of dried blood patched the ground, mixing with crumbs of mortar to form crusts like dark brown shields lying scattered on an ancient battlefield. Streaks of blood appeared to hang suspended in the air, and only by focusing hard could Pekkala see that they had, in fact, been splashed across the walls.
“Based on what Katamidze told me,” he said, “the guards were killed upstairs and dragged down here, probably to confuse investigators about where all this blood came from.”
“If you say so.” Anton looked around nervously. The bullet holes in the walls seemed to peer at them like eyes.
Pekkala spotted the lips of cartridge rims lying in the dust. Bending down, he picked one up and turned it over in his fingers. He used his thumb to rub away dust from the base and saw a tiny dent in the center where the gun’s firing pin had ignited the percussion cap. The markings around the base were Russian, dated 1918, indicating that the ammunition had been new when it was fired. Gathering up a handful of other cartridges, he noted that they were all made by the same manufacturer and all bore the same date.
“I have been meaning to talk to you,” said Anton.
Pekkala turned to his brother, who stood like a statue, lantern raised above his head to light the room. “About what?”
Anton glanced over his shoulder, to check that Kirov was nowhere around. “About that thing you called a fairy tale.”
“You mean the Tsar’s treasure?”
Anton nodded. “You and I both know it exists.”
“Oh, it exists,” agreed Pekkala. “I won’t argue with that. The fairy tale is that I know where it’s hidden.”
Anton struggled to contain his frustration. “The Tsar kept no secrets from you. You may be the only one on earth he really trusted. He must have told you where he hid his gold.”
“Even if I did know where it was,” Pekkala said, “it’s precisely because the Tsar did trust me that I would not think of taking it.”
Anton reached out and gripped his brother’s arm. “The Tsar is dead! His blood is on the floor beneath your feet. Your loyalty now is to the living.”
“If Alexei is alive, that gold belongs to him.”
“And after what your loyalty has cost you, don’t you think that you deserve some of it as well?”
“The only gold I need is what the dentist put in my teeth.”
“And what about Ilya? What does she deserve?”
At the mention of her name, Pekkala shuddered. “Leave her out of this,” he said.
“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten her,” Anton taunted.
“Of course not. I think about her all the time.”
“And you think perhaps she has forgotten you?”
Pekkala shrugged. He seemed to be in pain, as if his shoulder blades had grown too heavy for his back.
“You waited for her, didn’t you?” Anton insisted. “Then who’s to say she did not wait for you? She paid a price for her loyalty, too, but her loyalty was not to the Tsar. It was to you. And you owe it to her, when you find her again, to make sure she doesn’t end up begging in the street.”
Pekkala’s head was spinning. The patterns on the wallpaper danced before his eyes. It seemed to him the dull brown stains upon the floorboards were shining once again with the glimmer of fresh blood.
It was March 1917.
Pekkala heard a knocking at the door of his cottage on the Tsarskoye Selo estate, where he had been confined for months.
When he answered the door, he was astonished to see the Tsar standing there. Even though they were both prisoners here, the Tsar had never come to visit him before. In the peculiar balance of their lives, and even in a time like this, Pekkala’s privacy was more sacred than the Tsar’s.
The Tsar had aged in the past two months. The skin under his eyes sagged. The color was leached from his cheeks. He wore a slate gray tunic with plain brass buttons and a collar buttoned tight against his throat. “May I come in?” he asked.
“Yes,” Pekkala answered.
The Tsar waited a moment. “Then perhaps you could step aside.”
Pekkala almost tripped over himself getting out of the way.
“I can’t stay long,” the Tsar said. “They have me under constant surveillance. I must get back before they notice I am gone.” Standing in the low-ceilinged front room, the Tsar glanced at the pale yellow walls, taking in the little fireplace and the chair set out before it. His eyes roamed around the room until at last his gaze locked on Pekkala’s. “I apologize for not contacting you until now. But the truth is, the less you are seen with me, the better. I’ve heard a rumor that we are to be moved away from here, my family and I, sometime in the next couple of months.”
“Where are you going?”
“I heard someone mention Siberia. At least we will stay together. That is part of the agreement.” He sighed heavily. “Things have taken a turn for the worse. I was obliged to send a message to Major Kolchak. You remember him, don’t you?”
“Yes, Excellency. Your insurance policy.”
“Exactly. And in the spirit of taking care of what is valuable to me”-the Tsar smiled bleakly-“my old friend, I want you to get out of here.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a leather wallet. “Here are the documents for your journey.”
“Documents?”
“Forged, of course. Identity. Train tickets. Some money. They’re still taking proper currency. The Bolsheviks have not had time to print their own yet.”
“But, Excellency,” he protested, “I cannot agree to this-”
“Pekkala, if our friendship has meant anything to you, do not force me to take responsibility for your death. As soon as we have gone from Tsarskoye Selo, they’ll waste no time rounding up whoever’s left. And I can no more vouch for their safety than I can for my own. Once they realize you are missing, Pekkala, they will begin a search. The more of a head start you can get, the safer you will be. As you know,” the Tsar continued, “they have sealed off all entrances except the main gate and the entrance to the kitchen, but there is a section near the Lamskoy Pavilion which has been only partially blocked. It’s too narrow for vehicles, but a man alone can get through. A car is waiting for you there. It will take you as far as it can towards the Finnish border. There are no trains coming into the city, but they are still running in the outer districts. With any luck, you can catch one of those bound for Helsinki.” The Tsar held out the leather wallet. “Take it, Pekkala.”
Still confused, Pekkala removed the wallet from the Tsar’s outstretched hand.
“Ah. And there is one more thing,” said the Tsar. Reaching into the pocket of his tunic, he removed Pekkala’s copy of the Kalevala, which he had borrowed months before. “Perhaps you thought I had forgotten.” The Tsar placed the book in Pekkala’s hands. “I enjoyed it very much, Pekkala. You should take another look at it.”
“But, Excellency.” Pekkala set the book down on the table. “I know all the stories by heart.”
“Trust me, Pekkala.” The Tsar picked up the book again and slapped it gently against Pekkala’s chest.
Pekkala stared at him in confusion. “Very well, Excellency.” To hear the Tsar rambling like this almost brought him to tears. He understood that there was nothing more he could do. “When am I to leave?”
“Now!” The Tsar walked to the open doorway and pointed across the wide expanse of the Alexander Park, in the direction of the Lamskoy Pavilion. “It’s time you settled down with that schoolteacher of yours. Where is she now?”
“Paris, Excellency.”
“Do you know exactly where she is?”
“No, but I will find her.”
“I don’t doubt it,” the Tsar replied. “That’s what you’re trained in, after all. I wish I could come with you, Pekkala.”
They both knew how impossible that was.
“Now go,” the Tsar told him. “Before it is too late.”
Helpless to object, Pekkala set out across the park. Before he disappeared among the trees, however, he looked back towards his cottage.
The Tsar was still there, watching him go. He raised one hand in farewell.
In that moment, Pekkala felt a piece of himself die, like darkness turning in upon itself.