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

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?”