21

“IF YOU COULD JUST BRING US TO IT,” ANTON INSISTED. “WE wouldn’t have to take it all.”

“Enough,” said Pekkala.

“ Kirov doesn’t even need to know about it.”

“Enough!” he said again.

Anton fell silent.

Their shadows tilted with the movements of the lantern flame.

“For the last time, Anton, I don’t know where it is.”

Anton wheeled and started walking up the stairs.

“Anton!”

But his brother did not stop.

Knowing it was useless to pursue him, Pekkala returned to the dusty cartridges in the palm of his hand. Each one was 7.62 mm. They belonged to an M1895 Nagant. The revolver had a flimsy-looking barrel, a handle like a banana, and a large hammer like a thumb bent back on itself. In spite of its ungainly appearance, however, the Nagant was a work of art; its beauty emerged only when it was put to use. It fitted perfectly in the hand, the balance was precise, and for a handgun it was extremely accurate.

It was the unique shape of the cartridges Pekkala had found which betrayed the Nagant’s identity. In most types of ammunition, the bullet extended from the end of the cartridge, but in a Nagant’s cartridge the bullet nestled inside the brass tube. The reason for this was to form a gas seal which would provide more power when the gun fired. This gave the Nagant the added advantage of being adaptable for use with a silencer. Guns equipped with silencers had quickly become the weapon of choice for murderers: Pekkala had often encountered Nagants at crime scenes, the large cigar-like silencers screwed onto the ends of their barrels, abandoned near the bodies of shooting victims.

The sound of gunfire in an enclosed space like this must have been deafening, Pekkala thought. He tried to imagine the room as it would have been when the shooting finally stopped. The smoke and shattered plaster. Blood soaking into the dust. “A slaughterhouse,” he whispered to himself.

More bullet marks gashed the walls on the staircase, showing that the guards had not given up without a fight. On the second floor, where the Romanovs had lived, there were four bedrooms, two large and two small, as well as two studies. One room, its walls papered in dark green with fitted wooden shelves, had obviously belonged to a man. The other, whose walls were peach-colored, held a cushioned bench, upon which the woman of the house could have sat and looked out at people passing by on the road. The bench still lay in the room, tipped over on its side. One of its legs had been torn off by the impact of a bullet. An oval mirror hung crookedly on the wall, one shark’s tooth of glass remaining in the frame while the rest of it had fallen to the ground. Cobwebs hung on the light fixture above him. Traces of whitewash were still visible on the windowpanes. The Whites must have cleaned it off when they occupied the house, thought Pekkala.

He stood on the landing, his eye following the mercury-bright line of the polished bannister down to the ground floor. He tried to imagine the Tsar standing in this same spot. He remembered how the Tsar would sometimes pause in the middle of a sentence or when striding down one of the long hallways of the Winter Palace. He would remain motionless, like a man who heard music in the distance and was trying to pick up the tune. Now, as Pekkala made his way downstairs, he remembered times in the forest when he had watched stags, with antlers like forked branches of lightning emerging from their skulls, pause in just that way, waiting for some danger to reveal itself.

22

THE THREE MEN SAT TIRED AND STONY-FACED AROUND THE BARE wood kitchen table. The only sound was the scraping of spoons inside tins of food. They had no plates or bowls. Anton had simply opened half a dozen cans of vegetables and army ration meat and set them in the middle of the table. When one man was tired of eating sliced carrots, he put the tin back on the table and picked up a jar of shredded beets. They drank water from the well outside, poured into a chip-rimmed flower vase which they’d found on the floor of an upstairs room.

Kirov was the first to break. He shoved away his can of meat and snarled, “How much of this do I have to endure?” From his pocket, he pulled out the wooden apple. He thumped it down on the table. The painted red apple seemed to glow from the inside. “It makes my mouth water just to look at it,” said Kirov. He reached into his pocket and brought out his pipe. “To make things worse, I am almost out of tobacco.”

“Come now, Kirov,” Anton said. “What’s become of our happy little Junior Man?” He removed a bulging leather pouch from his pocket and inspected its contents. A leafy smell of unburned tobacco wafted across the table. “My own supply is holding out quite nicely.”

“Lend me some,” said Kirov.

“Get your own.” Anton breathed in, ready to say more, but his sentence was interrupted by a sound like a pebble thrown against a window.

The three men jumped.

The pipe fell out of Kirov ’s mouth.

“What the hell was that?” Anton asked.

The sound came again, louder now.

Anton drew his gun.

“Someone is at the door,” Pekkala said.

Whoever it was had come around the back, rather than risk being seen at the front of the house.

Pekkala went to see who it was.

The other two stayed at the table.

When Pekkala reappeared, he was followed by an old man with a wide belly and a side-to-side plod which made him teeter like a metronome as he walked into the room. With small, almond-brown eyes, he peered suspiciously at Anton.

“This is Yevgeny Mayakovsky,” Pekkala said.

The old man nodded in greeting.

“He says,” continued Pekkala, “he has information.”

“I remember you.” Anton was staring at the old man.

“I remember you, too.” Mayakovsky turned to leave. “Perhaps I should be going now-” he said.

“Not so fast.” Anton held up his hand. “Why don’t you stay for a while?” He pulled out a chair and patted the seat. “Make yourself comfortable.”

Reluctantly, Mayakovsky sat, sweat already dappling his red-veined cheeks.

“How is it you know each other?” asked Pekkala.

“Oh, he tried this little trick once before,” Anton replied. “The day the Cheka arrived, he showed up with information to sell. Swore he could make himself useful to us.”

“And did he?” Kirov asked.

“We didn’t give him the chance,” Anton replied.

“They broke my nose,” said Mayakovsky, quietly. “It was uncivilized.”

“If you were looking for civilization,” replied Anton, “you knocked at the wrong door.”

“When I saw the lights on here,” continued Mayakovsky, ignoring him, “I did not realize it was you.” He stirred in his chair. “I’ll just be on my way-”

“No one is going to hurt you this time,” Pekkala told him.

Mayakovsky eyed him. “Is that so?”

“I give you my word,” Pekkala replied.

“I’ve got something worth knowing,” said Mayakovsky, tapping a stubby finger against his temple.

“What are you talking about?” asked Pekkala.

“When the Whites came in, they set up a board of inquiry. They didn’t believe the Romanovs had survived. All they were interested in was making sure that the Reds took the blame. Then, when the Reds came back, they set up their own inquiry. Just like the Whites, they figured the Romanovs had all been killed. The difference was that the Reds wanted to be told that the guards in this house had taken matters into their own hands. It seemed like everyone wanted the Romanovs dead, but nobody wanted to be responsible for killing them. And then, of course, there’s what really happened.”

“And what is that?” asked Pekkala.

Mayakovsky clapped his hands together softly. “Well, that is the part which I have come to sell.”