Изменить стиль страницы

31

“IS IT RAINING?” OFFICER KROPOTKIN WAS STILL SEATED AT HIS DESK, as if he had not moved since they’d last spoken. He turned around in his chair and looked out through his window at the blue sky.

“No,” replied Pekkala. “It is not raining.”

Kropotkin turned back to Pekkala. “Then why are you dripping on my floor?”

“I have been in the duck pond.”

“Leaving no stone unturned, are you?”

Instinctively, Pekkala brought out his notebook. He opened it. A trickle of water poured out onto the floor. “I have a few questions,” he said.

As Pekkala gave the details of his conversation with Sister Ania, Kropotkin’s face became redder and redder until finally he leaped up from his chair and shouted, “Enough! If all the brides of Christ are as talkative as Sister Ania, then I hope for His sake that Jesus has gone deaf in His old age! What kind of trouble has she gotten me into?”

“None.”

“And what is it you want to know from me?”

“Why did the Tsar inform you that he no longer wanted to escape?”

“That isn’t what he said. He simply ordered me not to attempt a rescue.”

“Why did you think he did that?”

“He may have heard about what happened to his brother, the Grand Duke Mikhail, who was being held under guard in another part of the country.”

“He was shot while trying to escape, wasn’t he?”

“Not exactly.” Kropotkin shook his head. “Apparently Mikhail had been communicating with a group who claimed they were still loyal to the Tsar. Mikhail followed their instructions and, only a few weeks before the Tsar was executed, he gave his guards the slip. What he didn’t realize was that the men who had promised to save him were actually members of the Cheka. They had set him up. As soon as he escaped, they gunned him down.” Kropotkin shrugged. “After that, maybe the Tsar no longer trusted us, and who can blame him? But I would gladly have given up my life to rescue him. If it had worked, who knows? This country might be a different place today.”

“I have spoken to a number of people who believe that more than one of the Tsar’s children survived.”

“What you are hearing,” said Kropotkin, “is the collective guilt of this town. Even if it were possible to believe that the Tsar and the Tsarina were guilty of the crimes held against them by the politicians in Moscow, no one in their right mind could be persuaded that those children deserved to die. At worst, they might have been spoiled. They might have been sheltered from the world. But that was not their doing, and it does not amount to a crime. There are those who despised the Tsar long before he arrived in Sverdlovsk, but people will always despise someone who has more than they do, and it is easier to hate something at a distance. But when the Tsar arrived with his family, they were forced to see him as another human being. To kill a family who stand unarmed before you requires something more than hate. It is why, in the stories they have told you, the children were allowed to go free.”

“So you do not believe anyone survived?”

“If they had,” replied Kropotkin, “I think we would have heard from them by now. Of course, there is one other possibility.”

“And what is that?”

“That the Tsar had received another offer of escape.”

“But the only messages getting through to the Tsar from outside came from you.”

“I don’t mean from outside. I mean from inside the Ipatiev house.”

“You mean the Cheka?”

“Maybe they planned to kill him while he was trying to escape, just like they did with the Grand Duke Mikhail.”

Pekkala shook his head. “The Tsar was not killed while trying to escape.”

“Then perhaps someone in the Cheka guards really did intend to rescue him.”

“To me,” said Pekkala, “that seems almost impossible.”

“Do you really find it so incredible that someone would go to such lengths to keep the Tsar alive?” asked Kropotkin. “After all, your own survival is nothing short of miraculous.”

“Yours as well,” added Pekkala. “The Communists must have suspected you of collaborating with the Whites. And yet they still made you their chief of police in Sverdlovsk.”

“The Reds needed someone who could keep the peace,” explained Kropotkin. “At the time, they couldn’t afford to be picky. Since then, they have not seen fit to get rid of me. But that day will come. The only way to have a future in this country is to have no past. That is a luxury neither you nor I possess, and sooner or later we will pay the price for it.”

“What will you do when they decide that they no longer need you, Kropotkin?”

Kropotkin shrugged. “My line of work might change, but the things I care about, the things for which I am prepared to risk my life, will not.”

“To the people running this country, that makes you a dangerous man.”

“Not half as dangerous as you, Inspector Pekkala. I am a man of flesh and blood. I can be made to disappear without a trace. But getting rid of you”-Kropotkin smiled-“now that would take some doing.”

“You talk as if I’m bulletproof,” said Pekkala, “which, I can assure you, I am not.”

“Not you,” replied Kropotkin, aiming a finger at Pekkala, “but that.”

Pekkala realized Kropotkin was pointing at the emerald eye badge, visible now since the soaked lapel of his coat had been turned up. “Even though your life can be snuffed out in an instant, the Emerald Eye is already the stuff of legend. It cannot simply be dismissed out of hand, and the truth is, they do not want to dismiss it. They need you, Pekkala. They need your legendary incorruptibility-just as the Tsar did before them. Most legends have the luxury of being dead, but as long as you remain alive, you are as dangerous to them as you are valuable. The sooner you are gone, the safer they will feel.”

“Then they will not have long to wait,” Pekkala told him. “As soon as this case has been solved, I am leaving the country forever.”

Kropotkin sat back in his chair. He tapped the end of a pencil against his thumbnail. “I hope that is true, but what they have in you, they will not want to lose. They will do everything they can to keep you here, where they can still control your fate. If they succeed, everything you have worked for will be lost and you and I will find ourselves on opposite sides in this war.”

“I have no wish to become your enemy,” said Pekkala.

Kropotkin nodded. “Then, for both our sakes, let us hope that when the time comes you will make the right choice.”

Days went by, while Pekkala lingered in his cell, waiting for the interrogations to begin.

Food was delivered once a day through a sliding panel just beneath the peephole. He received a bowl of salty cabbage soup and a mug of tea. Both the bowl and the mug were made of such soft metal that he could crumple them in his fist as if they had been made of clay.

After the food was taken away, two guards escorted him to a toilet. One guard stood in front and one behind. Only the guard behind him spoke. “If you step to the left. If you step to the right.” The guard did not finish his sentences. He did not have to. Instead, he reached from behind and tapped the cold metal barrel of a gun against Pekkala’s cheek.

The guard in front started walking and Pekkala felt a gentle push from the guard behind.

Thick gray carpet covered the prison floors. The guards’ boots were soled with felt. Except for the quiet commands issued by the guards, the silence at Butyrka was complete.

They led him down a windowless corridor, lined with doors, to a room with a hole in the middle of the floor and a bucket of water set beside it.

Minutes later, he was on his way down the hall again, bare feet padding on the carpet. He stumbled back into his cell.

He couldn’t sleep. All he could do was slump into a kind of semiconsciousness. His knees, crunched against the door, grew permanently numb. He lost all feeling in his feet.