Sam Eastland - Eye of the Red Tsar A Novel of Suspense

The man’s left arm was broken, probably by the fall. The right arm lay across his face. Pekkala wondered if the man had survived the fall and tried to protect himself from the bodies which were thrown down after him.

In addition to riding breeches and tall boots, the dead man wore a tunic in the gymnastyrka style. The tunic had been modified to open down the front and the stand collar was decorated with two thick bands of silver brocade. The color of the tunic had originally been a pale greenish brown, the front and hem trimmed with the same silver brocade as the collar. Now it was the color of a rotten apple. He had seen this tunic before.

Now there was no doubt in Pekkala’s mind that this was indeed the body of the Tsar. The Tsar had owned dozens of different uniforms, each representing different branches of service of the Russian military. This particular uniform, which the Tsar put on when reviewing his regiments of Guards, had been one of the most comfortable to wear. Because of that, it was also one of his favorites.

Four bullet wounds were clearly visible in the chest of the tunic. Pekkala studied the faded stains of blood that radiated from the wounds. Powder burns revealed that the shots had come from extremely close range. Gently, Pekkala moved the arm, to better see the dead man’s face. He fully expected the skull to have been shattered like the rest, but was surprised: it was still intact. No bullet had penetrated the dura oblongata. He stared in confusion at the remains of the neatly trimmed beard, the hollow where the nose had been, the shriveled lips pulled back around a set of strong, straight teeth.

Pekkala stood back, gasping in a breath not filled with the dust of decay. He glanced upwards, to where a velvet disk of night sky showed the mouth of the mine shaft. At that moment, as if jolted from the scaffolding of his own body, Pekkala found himself looking through the eyes of the Tsar as those last seconds of his life played out on the floor of the mine. From far above, spears of light stabbed down towards him. They glinted off a tunnel of wet stone. Illuminated raindrops flickered like jewels all around. Then he saw silhouettes of the Tsar’s wife and children come tumbling down towards him, fingers spread like wing tips, the dresses of the women thrumming with the speed of their descent. Pekkala felt them pass right through him, trailing the night behind them like black comets, and he heard their bones shatter like glass.

Pekkala shook the nightmare from his head. He forced himself to focus on the work that lay before him. Why, he asked himself, would the killer execute the women with a shot to the head but leave the Tsar’s face intact? It would have made more sense if things had been done the other way around, particularly if the killings had been done, as he suspected, by a male. Such a killer would have been more likely to disfigure someone of his own gender.

Suddenly Pekkala’s heart began to thunder in his chest. He had been so focused on this detail that he had completely forgotten something far more important.

The Tsar’s corpse was the last one in the pile.

Hoping he might somehow be mistaken, Pekkala glanced at the bodies of the women laid out on the dirt floor of the mine.

But there had been no mistake. One body was missing.

Alexei was not among the dead.

Every time Pekkala thought about the boy, he felt a constriction in his throat. Of all the members of that family, Alexei had been his favorite. The daughters were charming, particularly the eldest daughter, Olga, but all four of them remained aloof. They were beautiful, although in a melancholy way, and rarely acknowledged his presence. Pekkala knew he made them nervous, towering above them in his black overcoat and seemingly immune to the kind of frivolity which occupied much of their lives. He lacked the refinements of the seemingly endless procession of visitors received by the Romanov family. The stylishly dressed barons, lords, and dukes-there was always a title in there somewhere-tweaking their trim mustaches and peppering their speech with French exclamations, considered Pekkala too coarse for their company.

“Don’t mind them, Pekkala!” said Alexei.

Following reports of an explosion in the streets of Petersburg, Pekkala had been summoned by the Tsar to the royal estate, known as Tsarskoye Selo and located on the outskirts of the city.

As he entered the Tsar’s study, in the north wing of the Alexander Palace, a cluster of guests barged past him without so much as a glance in his direction.

The Tsar was sitting at his desk.

Alexei sat beside him, his head in a white bandage which bulged with some concoction of herbs prescribed to him by Rasputin.

Alexei’s expression was always the same-both warm and sad. The hemophilia which afflicted the boy had come so close many times to taking his life that the Tsar, and the Tsarina Alexandra in particular, seemed almost to have absorbed the disease into their own bodies. Alexei could have bled to death from the kind of nick or scrape a normal boy might expect to receive every day. This frailty had required him to live as a person might if they were made of glass. And so the parents lived as if they too were as fragile, like the tens of thousands of pieces of amber which plated the walls of the Catherine Palace ’s Amber Room, or the extraordinarily intricate Fabergé eggs the Tsar gave to his wife as birthday presents.

Even Alexei’s friends were hand-selected by his parents for their ability to play gently. Pekkala remembered the soft-spoken Makarov brothers-thin and nervous boys whose ears stuck out and who carried their shoulders in a perpetual hunch, like children do when they are waiting for a firework to explode. In spite of his frailty, Alexei outlived them: both had died in the war.

No matter what precautions they took with their son, his parents seemed always to be waiting for that moment when Alexei would simply fade away. Then they, too, would crumble to dust.

“Alexei is right,” the Tsar said. “You mustn’t mind those people.” Dismissively, he flipped his hand in the direction of the guests.

“They did not give you the welcome you deserve,” said Alexei.

“They do not know me,” replied Pekkala.

“Lucky for you, eh?” The Tsar smiled. He always seemed to cheer up when Pekkala was around.

“But we know you, Pekkala,” said Alexei, “and that’s what matters most.”

“Now then, Pekkala! See what I have here!” The Tsar gestured towards a red handkerchief which lay upon the desk. The handkerchief looked out of place beside the neatly arranged pens, scissors, inkwell, and jade-handled letter opener. The Tsar required his desk to be kept in perfect order. When speaking to people in his study, particularly those whose company he did not care for, he would often make minute adjustments to these items, as if the distance of a millimeter between objects was the absolute margin of his sanity.

Now, with the flourish of a magician performing a trick, the Tsar whisked away the handkerchief to reveal what lay beneath.

To Pekkala, it looked like some kind of large egg. Its colors were luminous-a blur of flaming greens and reds and oranges. He wondered if it might be another one of Fabergé’s creations.

“What do you think, Pekkala?” asked the Tsar

Pekkala knew how to make the most of these games. “It appears to be”-he paused-“some sort of magic bean.”

The Tsar burst out laughing, showing his strong white teeth.

Alexei laughed too, but he always bowed his head and kept a hand against his mouth.

“Magic bean!” shouted the Tsar. “Now I have heard everything!”

“It’s a mango,” said Alexei. “Those people who just left brought it to us as a present. It’s come all the way from South America by the fastest ships and boats and trains. According to what they said, that mango was hanging from a tree not even three weeks ago.”