Pekkala stared at the people milling about in the street. They all appeared so happy. Then he caught the eye of a man sitting by himself on a bench, smoking his pipe. And there was nothing but fear in his gaze.

A railway station stood on the other side of the town. The single track ended in a siding and a turnaround, so that the engine could go back the way it had come in. The train had been readied for its return journey, wherever that was. Black curtains covered the windows of the two carriages, whose olive green sides were trimmed with navy blue paint. The side of each carriage was emblazoned with a hammer and sickle, surrounded by a large red star.

Four men who had been sitting on the edge of the platform, legs dangling down towards the tracks, suddenly jumped to their feet when they saw the car approaching, grabbing brooms and sweeping the platform busily. Their sweeping paused as they gaped at the car’s occupants. The men appeared confused. They were still staring at the car as it sped out of sight towards the second roadblock.

The road dipped down into a hollow, where they suddenly came up against another heavy wooden beam straddling the road.

Kirov jammed on the brakes and the car skidded to a stop.

More guards were waiting for them.

“Did you stop in town?” asked the man in charge.

“No,” replied Kirov.

“Did you speak to anyone?”

“No.”

Kirov held out his wooden apple. “Do you want this back?” he asked.

The apples were collected. When the barricade was lifted, Kirov hit the pedal so hard the wheels of the Emka spun in the dirt.

Emerging from the hollow, Pekkala looked back and saw now why that location had been chosen. From the train tracks, the roadblock was invisible, in case any of the foreigners managed to get a look past the black curtains hiding their view. He wondered what story the authorities had cooked up for keeping the windows covered. He wondered, too, if the journalists from the West believed what they were being shown.

Beyond, the land returned to the way it had been before-with fields gone fallow, rows of dead fruit trees clawing the sky with leafless skeleton branches, and houses whose roofs drooped saddlebacked from neglect.

Suddenly, Kirov swerved off the road.

The two brothers collided and swore.

As soon as the car had come to a stop, Kirov got out and walked into the field, leaving his door open. He stood there, staring out across the empty countryside.

Before Pekkala could ask, Anton began to explain. “After the Revolution, the government ordered all of the farms to be collectivized. The original landowners were either shot or sent to Siberia. The people who were left in charge did not know how to run the farms, so the crops failed. There was a famine. Five million people died of starvation.”

Pekkala breathed out through his teeth.

“Maybe more than five,” continued Anton. “Exact numbers will never be known. When word of the famine reached the outside world, our government simply denied it. They have built several of these model towns. Foreign journalists are invited to tour the country. They are well fed. They receive gifts. They see these model villages. They are told that the famine is a fabrication of anti-Soviet propaganda. The location of these villages is secret. I didn’t realize this was one of them until we reached it.”

“Do you think those journalists believed what they were seeing?” asked Pekkala.

“Enough of them do. People can sympathize with the death of one person, five people, ten people, but to them a million deaths is only a statistic. As long as there is doubt, they will choose what is easiest to believe. That is why you and your Tsar didn’t stand a chance against us in the Revolution. You wanted too badly to believe that the human capacity for violence has limitations. The Tsar went to his death believing that because he loved his people, they would love him back. And look where it has gotten you.”

Pekkala said nothing. He looked down at his hands and slowly clenched them into fists.

When Kirov returned to the car, Pekkala and Anton were both surprised to see that he was smiling.

“Glad to see you looking so inspired,” sneered Anton, when Kirov had them on the road again.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Kirov replied cheerfully. “Don’t you understand the genius in what we saw back there? We were taught at the Institute that sometimes it is necessary to portray the truth in a different light.”

“You mean to lie,” corrected Pekkala.

“A temporary lie,” explained Kirov. “Someday, when the time is right, the record will be set straight.”

“You believe that?” Pekkala asked.

“Of course!” the Commissar replied enthusiastically. “I just never thought I’d actually get to see it for myself.”

Pekkala reached into his pocket and removed the wooden apple he had been given at the checkpoint and which he had failed to return. He tossed it into Kirov ’s lap. “Here’s a little souvenir, from your visit to the town of temporary lies.”

Anton reached across and bounced a fist off his brother’s shoulder. “Welcome to the Revolution,” he said.

But Pekkala was not thinking about the Revolution. His thoughts had drifted back to an earlier time, when apples like that had been real.

He found the Tsar chopping firewood outside the greenhouses of the Tsarskoye Selo estate, which were known as the Orangeries.

When he emerged onto the terrace of the Catherine Palace, having failed to locate the Tsar in any of its rooms, he’d heard, in the distance, the rhythmic sound of an axe cutting into dry wood.

From the way that axe was being handled-rapidly, without hesitation, and without the heavy thump of someone using more strength than was necessary to split logs into kindling-Pekkala knew it was the Tsar.

The Tsar liked to exercise, but not for its own sake. He preferred to be doing something he considered useful, such as shoveling snow, clearing rushes from the edges of the ponds. But his favorite occupation was simply to hide himself away behind the Orangeries and lose himself in the meditation of swinging an axe.

It was a cold day in late September. The first snow of the winter had fallen and the ground was hard with frost. In a few days the snow would probably melt again. Roads and paths would turn to mud. Pekkala had noticed that these first snowfalls were a special time for people in Petrograd. It filled them with new energy, replenishing what had been sapped from them by the muggy summer months.

The Tsar was stripped to the waist. On his left rose a pile of neatly stacked logs, each one about half the length of a man’s leg. On his right lay the jumble of logs which had been quartered for use as kindling. In the middle, the Tsar used a tree stump as a cutting platform. Pekkala admired the precision of the Tsar’s work, the way he placed each log for cutting, the effortless rise of the axe, its ash handle sliding through his grip until it reached the height of its arc. Then came the sharp downward swing, almost too swift to see, and the log would split apart like segments of an orange.

Pekkala waited at the edge of the clearing until the Tsar had paused to wipe sweat from his face. Then he stepped forward and cleared his throat.

The Tsar wheeled about, surprised. At first, he looked annoyed to have been disturbed, but his expression softened when he realized who it was. “Oh, it’s you, Pekkala.” He let the axe drop onto the tree stump. Its blade bit into the wood, and when he let go, the axe stayed where it was, jutting at an angle from the cutting platform. “What brings you here today?”

“I have come to ask for a favor, Excellency.”

“A favor?” The Tsar slapped his hands together, as if to brush away the redness in his palms. “Well, it’s about time you asked me for something. I was beginning to think you had no use for me at all.”