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

“As you see,” continued the officer, “from these things which we have found in your possession, we know exactly who you are, Inspector Pekkala.” He spoke in a voice so quiet that it seemed almost timid.

“ Georgia,” replied Pekkala.

“Excuse me?”

“ Georgia,” Pekkala repeated. “Your accent.”

“Ah, yes, I am from Tiflis.”

Now Pekkala remembered. “Dzhugashvili,” he said. “Josef Dzhugashvili. You were responsible for a bank robbery in 1907 which left over forty people dead.” He could hardly believe that a man he had once hunted as a criminal was now sitting before him, on the other side of an interrogator’s table.

“That is correct,” said Dzhugashvili, “except that now my name is Josef Stalin and I am no longer a robber of banks. Now I am chief advisor to the People’s Commissariat.”

“And you are here to give me some advice?”

“I am. Yes. Advice which I hope you will take. A detective with your experience could be very useful to us. Many of your former comrades have agreed to work with the new government. This is, of course, after they have informed us of the details of their work.” He studied Pekkala for a moment. Then he held up one stubby finger, like a man checking the direction of the wind. “But I think you are not going to be one of those people.”

“I am not,” agreed Pekkala.

“This much I was told to expect,” Stalin said. “Then you understand that things must go another way.”

THAT EVENING, WHEN PEKKALA RETURNED TO THE IPATIEV HOUSE, HE found Kirov boiling potatoes in the kitchen. The windows wept with condensation.

Pekkala sat down at the table, folded his arms, and lowered his head until his forehead was resting on his wrists. “No deals with Mayakovsky today?”

“The old son of a bitch is crafty,” replied Kirov. “He gives us enough to whet our appetites, then lets us go hungry while his prices go through the roof.”

“I expect he’ll start charging more for information, too.”

“I was talking about information,” replied Kirov, “but I know how to deal with types like that.”

“Oh, yes?”

Kirov nodded. “You give them a present.”

“But why?”

“Because they’re not expecting it. People like Mayakovsky don’t have friends and don’t need friends. They don’t get presents very often and when they do, it throws them completely off balance.”

“You’re smarter than you look,” grunted Pekkala.

“That’s how I can get away with being smart.” Kirov sighed. “But I wasn’t smart enough to scrounge up more than a few potatoes in town today.”

“Did you learn anything when you were there?” asked Pekkala.

“Only that this whole town has gone mad.” With a wooden spoon, Kirov stirred the potatoes in the pot of boiling water. “Almost everyone I talked to swore they’d seen one of the Romanovs alive. Never the whole family together. Just one of them. You’d think the Tsar and his wife and his children had all run off in different directions that night, and yet somehow they ended up at the bottom of that mine shaft.”

Pekkala lifted his head. “Except one.”

“Still,” said Kirov, “I don’t believe Alexei has survived.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Even if the killer had let him go free, how long do you think he would have survived on the run in the middle of a revolution? A hemophiliac? That boy might as well be made of porcelain. Alexei didn’t stand a chance.”

“Why Alexei is not among the dead I can’t even begin to guess,” said Pekkala, “but as long as he is missing, the search for him has to continue. In the meantime, I think the Tsar believed he could escape from Sverdlovsk, only not without help. What I don’t know yet is who he thought was going to help him, and how he ended up dead. He may have been tricked, or the rescue attempt could have failed. Maybe the Cheka guards killed the Romanovs when they realized they were under attack. That could be why the dead guards were found in the basement. Perhaps the man who came to rescue the Tsar panicked and threw the bodies down the mine shaft, rather than leave them to be discovered in the Ipatiev house.”

“That way,” Kirov speculated, “the Reds would assume that the Tsar and his family were still alive. They’d waste their time looking for the Romanovs and not just for whoever tried to rescue them.” With a handkerchief wrapped around the pot handle, he emptied the milky-colored water down the drain. A cloud of steam swirled up around him. He set the pot on the table, then sat down opposite Pekkala. “But what do I know? I’m just here as an observer.”

“ Kirov,” said Pekkala, “you will make a fine detective someday.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you knew how little I’d turned up. All I got was a stack of photographs.”

“Photographs?”

“Some old lady gave them to me. Said they were from Katamidze’s studio. Said Katamidze gave them to her as a gift, but after Katamidze disappeared, she was afraid she’d get into trouble for holding on to them.”

“Where are they?”

“They’re in the front room. I was going to throw them in the fire, seeing as we are running out of wood to burn-”

Before Kirov had finished his sentence, Pekkala dashed out of the room.

“They’re mostly landscapes, nothing important,” called Kirov. “You won’t find the Tsar in any of them!”

A moment later Pekkala returned. A sheaf of photographs was clutched in his fist. There were about two dozen of them, their ends curled up and torn. A haze of fingerprints stained the images. Most were pictures of the town. The church with its onion dome spire. The main street, with the Ipatiev house in the distance and a blurred, ghostly image of a horse and cart crossing in front of the camera’s view. There was a pond, with the same church in the distance. On the other side of the water, a woman in a long skirt and headscarf stooped to gather something in the weeds. A few of the photos were of the nuns whose images he had seen on the walls of the convent. On these, it looked as if Katamidze had been trying to color them but had given up halfway through the process.

“These must be his rejects,” muttered Pekkala. He sat back and rubbed his tired eyes.

“I told you they weren’t important,” said Kirov.

Each man speared a potato and began to eat, puffing their cheeks with the heat.

Anton stumbled in, his breath a fog of pickled beets and Lake Baikal sprat. These fish, dried and shriveled to the shape of crumpled cigars, hung threaded on wires above the bar, their tiny bones like musical notes under the hard, translucent flesh. If a customer wanted a fish, he simply reached up and twisted the body, snapping off its head, which remained on the wire. Men with no money would then pick off the head and eat it, chewing the metallic-tasting cartilage until nothing remained.

Anton tossed a notebook on the table. “It’s all in there,” he said.

Pekkala picked up the notebook and flipped through it. “These pages are blank.”

“You must be a detective, after all,” said Anton.

“You call this help?” asked Pekkala, struggling to contain his anger.

Anton sat down at the table. He spotted the photographs and picked them up. “Ooh, pictures.”

“They belonged to Katamidze,” explained Kirov.

“Any naked ones?” asked Anton.

Kirov shook his head.

“I bet Mayakovsky has them. He seems to have everything else.”

“I told you not to drink,” said Pekkala.

Anton dropped the stack of photos. “You told me?” he asked. Then he slammed his hand down on the table. “You mean you ordered me! You can’t go to a tavern and not drink! I did my job, just like you told me to, so you can just lay off me, Inspector.” He hawked out the last word as if it were a chunk of fat. “The tavern is where people tell their secrets! That’s what you said.”