He had not been prepared for the waiting. It grated on his nerves until his whole mind had frayed like the tatters of a flag left flapping in a hurricane.

With no glimpse of the outside world, he soon lost track of how long he had been in the prison.

Using his thumbnail, Pekkala made a small groove in the wall to show when the food came. He noticed other scratches on the walls, similar to his own, which also seemed to have been made with a fingernail. There were several different sets, one with over a hundred marks. The sight of that filled him with dread. He knew he could not last a hundred days in this cell.

On what he imagined was his twenty-first day at Butyrka, the guards escorted Pekkala to a different room, in which there were two chairs, separated by a small metal-topped desk.

He had been naked since his first hour at the prison, but now one of the guards handed him a set of beige-colored pajamas made from thin, musty-smelling cotton. The bottoms had drawstrings at the ankles but not at the waist. From then on, one of Pekkala’s hands was constantly occupied with holding up his trousers.

The guards left, closing the door behind them.

A minute later, an officer entered the room, carrying a small briefcase. He was of medium height, with a pocked and freckled face, yellowy-green eyes, and a tangle of thick black hair. Although his uniform fitted him, he did not seem at ease in it, and Pekkala guessed he had not been wearing it for long.

The officer opened the briefcase. From it, he removed Pekkala’s Webley, which he had been carrying at the time of his arrest at Vainikkala. The man held up the gun, examining it carefully. His thumb accidentally touched the button for loading the Webley and the barrel of the gun folded forward suddenly, exposing the chambers of the cylinder. The officer was startled and almost dropped the gun.

Pekkala had to stop himself from lunging forward to catch it, to keep the Webley from falling to the floor.

The officer caught the gun just in time. Hurriedly, he replaced it in the briefcase. The next thing he removed was the emerald eye. With the badge resting on his fingertips, the man tilted it back and forth so that the gemstone caught the light. “Your enemies call you the monster of the Tsar.” The man replaced the badge inside the case. “But you do not look like a monster to me.” Lastly, he removed Pekkala’s book. He flipped through it, staring without comprehension at the words of the Kalevala. Then he dropped that, too, back where he had found it.

He cleared his throat several times before he spoke again. “Did you know that Finland has declared its independence from Russia?”

Pekkala had not known. The news shocked him. He wondered how his father, such a loyal supporter of the Tsar, must be feeling.

“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.”

32

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.”