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

“Did you see the Romanovs?”

“Not at first,” said Katamidze, and in the silence which followed his lips continued to shape the words. At first. At first. At first. “I could hear them upstairs. Muffled voices. There was music, too. It was playing on a gramophone. Mozart. Sonata number 331. I used to play that tune when I was studying piano.”

Mozart had been one of the Tsarina’s favorite composers. Pekkala remembered the way she tilted her head while she listened. She would hold the thumb and index finger of her right hand joined in an O, tracing seagulls in the air as if conducting the music herself.

“I carried my equipment down to the basement,” continued Katamidze. “Then I brought down some chairs from the dining room. I set up my light and the tripod. I was just checking the film in the camera when I heard a noise behind me and a woman appeared at the bottom of the stairs. It was the Princess Maria. I recognized her right away from pictures I had seen. I didn’t know what to do, so I got down on my knees! Then she laughed at me and said I should get to my feet. She said she had been told about the portrait and wanted to know if everything was ready. I told her it was. I said they should come right away. Then she went back up the stairs.”

“What did you do then?”

“What did I do? I checked the camera about twenty times to make sure it was working, and then I heard them coming down the stairs. Soft as mice. They filed into the room, and I bowed to each one and they nodded their heads at me. I thought my heart was going to stop!

“I arranged the Tsar and the Tsarina in the two middle chairs, then the two youngest, Anastasia and Alexei, on either side. Behind them stood the three eldest daughters.”

“How did they seem to you?” asked Pekkala. “Did they look nervous?”

“Not nervous. No. I wouldn’t say that.”

“Did they speak to you?”

Katamidze shook his head. “Only to ask if I wanted them to move or if the way they were standing was acceptable. I could barely answer them, I was so nervous.”

“Go on,” said Pekkala. “What happened then?”

“I had just taken the first picture. I was planning on several. Then I heard someone knocking on the front door of the house, the same one I’d used to come in. The guards opened the door. There was some sort of conversation. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Then there was shouting. That’s the first time I saw the Tsar looking nervous. And the next thing I heard was a gun going off! Once! Twice! I lost count. There was a regular battle going on upstairs. One of the princesses screamed. I don’t know which one. I heard the Tsarevich Alexei ask his father if they were going to be rescued. The Tsar told them all to be quiet. He got out of the chair and walked past me to the door and closed it. I was frozen to the spot. He turned to me and asked if I knew what was happening. I couldn’t even speak. He must have known that I had no idea. The Tsar said to me-‘Do not let them see you are afraid.’”

“And then?”

“Footsteps. Coming down the stairs. Somebody stopped outside the closed door. Then the door flew open. Another Cheka guard came into the room.”

“A different one?”

“Yes. I hadn’t seen this man before. At first, I thought he had come to tell us that we were safe.”

“Just the one man? Can you describe him?”

Katamidze screwed up his face, trying to recall. “He was neither tall nor short. He had a thin chest. Narrow shoulders.”

“What about his face?”

“He had one of those caps which the officers wear, the kind where the brim comes down over their eyes. I couldn’t see him very well. He was holding a revolver in each hand.”

Pekkala nodded. “And then?”

“The Tsar told the man to let me go,” continued Katamidze. “At first, I didn’t think he would, but then the man just told me to get out. As I stumbled from the room, I heard the man talking to the Tsar.”

“What were they speaking about?”

“I couldn’t hear. Their voices were muffled.”

“Did you hear the Tsar call him by name?”

Katamidze stared up at the lightbulb in the ceiling, teeth gritting with the exertion of remembering. “The Tsar called out a word when the man first entered the room. It could have been a name. I remembered it for a while, but then it went out of my head.”

“Try, Katamidze. Try to remember it now.”

The prisoner laughed. “After so long trying to forget…” He shook his head. “No. I don’t recall. The next thing I remember is that the Tsar and the guard began to argue. Then the guns went off. There was screaming. The room filled with smoke.”

“Why didn’t you run?” asked Pekkala.

“I was so petrified I couldn’t get my legs to take me up the stairs. I just stood there and watched. I couldn’t believe what was happening.”

“What did you do then?”

“The shooting stopped suddenly. The door was half open. I could see the guard reloading the guns. Bodies were writhing on the floor. I heard groaning. A woman’s arm reached out through the smoke. I could see Alexei. He was still sitting in his chair. He had his hands held up by his chest. He was just staring straight ahead. When the guns were loaded again, the guard moved from one person to the next.” He fell silent, his jaw locked open, unable to find the words.

“Did you see him shoot Alexei?”

“I saw him shoot the Tsarina,” whispered Katamidze.

Pekkala flinched, as if the sound of that blast had just ripped through the air. “But what about Alexei? What happened to him?”

“I don’t know. I don’t see how anyone could have survived. Finally, I came to my senses and ran. Up the stairs. Out the front door. As I left the house I nearly fell over the two guards who had let me in. They’d both been shot and were lying on the floor. There was a lot of blood. I assumed they were dead. I didn’t stop to check. I don’t understand it. If the Cheka were supposed to be guarding the Romanovs, why would one of them have murdered the Tsar and even some of his own people?”

“What happened next, Katamidze?”

“I ran out into the dark,” the man replied, “and I just kept running. First I went home, but then I realized it was only a matter of time before someone came looking for me, either the gunman or people who thought I’d committed the murders. So I left. I ran away. In the woods outside of town I have a little cabin, the kind they call a Zemlyanka.”

Pekkala thought of his own cabin, deep in the forest of Krasnagolyana, now only a silhouette of ash and rusted nails.

“I knew I’d be safe there,” continued Katamidze, “for a while at least. I had been on the move for about an hour when I passed by the old mine at the edge of town. It is a bad place. In the old language, it is called Tunug Koriak. It means ‘the place where the birds have stopped singing.’ The locals stay away from there. The people who worked in that mine had to be brought in from somewhere else. They all got sick. Most of them died.”

“What was mined there?”

“Radium. The stuff they use on watches and on compasses. It glows in the dark. The dust is poisonous.”

“What did you see at the mine?”

“One of the Cheka trucks. The same man who killed the Romanovs. He had unloaded the bodies next to the mine shaft. He was throwing them down one by one.”

“Are you sure it was him?”

Katamidze nodded. “The headlights of the truck were on. When he passed in front of the beam, I knew it was him.”

“But are you sure he threw in all of the bodies?”

“By the time I arrived, the truck was already there. I don’t know how many bodies he threw down.”

“Did he see you?”