Mayakovsky nodded. “Precisely.”

Pekkala glanced up from his shaving mirror. “All right, Mayakovsky, what are you driving at?”

“Since I do not own this house,” explained the old man, “the dream of owning it persists. I have come to realize that the dream of owning it is now worth more to me than the house itself. I tried to pretend otherwise. How can a man admit that his whole life has been spent searching for something he does not actually want?”

Slowly, Pekkala lowered the razor from his face. “He can admit it, if he faces the truth.”

“Yes,” agreed Mayakovsky, “if, like Occam’s razor, he can understand where the facts are pointing him.”

“I pity you, Mayakovsky.”

“Save some pity for yourself, Inspector.” Mayakovsky’s forged smile flickered on and off, as if it were attached to some faulty electrical current. “You also seem to be in search of a thing you do not really want.”

“And what is it you think I’m looking for?” asked Pekkala.

“The Tsar’s treasure!” spat Mayakovsky. Until now, the old man had been choosing his words carefully, but now they sounded like an accusation.

“What do you know about that?” Pekkala wiped the soap from his blade onto a dish towel laid across his knee.

“I know that the Tsar had hidden it so well that no one could find it. Not that they didn’t try. I saw them. The carriage shed in this courtyard was filled with the trunks the Romanovs brought with them. Beautiful trunks. The kind with curved wooden railings and brass locks, each trunk numbered and named. Well, the militia searched them and stole a few things, but they didn’t really know what they were looking for-just a bunch of books and fancy clothes. Those Cheka boys must have figured out that even if the valuables themselves weren’t in the trunks, they might discover a clue as to where they could find them. Every night, those Cheka guards sneaked out and searched those trunks, but they never found anything.”

“What makes you think that, Mayakovsky?”

“Because if they had found it, Inspector Pekkala, they would have no use for you. Why else would they have kept you alive?”

“Mayakovsky,” said Pekkala, “I am here to investigate the possibility that the execution of the Romanovs was not fully carried out.”

Mayakovsky nodded sarcastically. “More than a decade after they vanished. Do the wheels of bureaucracy in Moscow really turn as slowly as that? The Romanovs are a footnote in history. Whether they are alive or dead no longer matters.”

“It matters to me.”

“That is because you are also a footnote in history-a ghost searching for other ghosts.”

“I may be a ghost,” said Pekkala, “but I am not searching for that gold.”

“Then your emerald eye is blind, Inspector, because you are being used by someone who is. You said it yourself-greed is never satisfied. The difference between us, Inspector, is that I have faced the facts and you have not.”

“I will decide that for myself, Mayakovsky.”

As if prompted by some invisible signal, both men rose to their feet.

“Katamidze is dead,” Pekkala said. “I thought you should know.”

“People don’t last long in Vodovenko.”

“He knew who murdered the Tsar. He may have been the only one who could have told me the name of the killer.”

“I may be able to help you,” said Mayakovsky.

“How?”

“There is someone Katamidze knew, someone he might have spoken to before he disappeared from Sverdlovsk.”

“Who?” asked Pekkala. “For God’s sake, Mayakovsky, if you know anything at all…”

Mayakovsky held up his hand. “I will talk to this person,” he said. “I must go about this carefully.”

“When can you let me know?”

“I will see to it at once.” The old man’s voice was calm and reassuring. “I may have an answer for you later today.”

“I expect it will come at a price. You must know by now that we don’t have much to give you.”

Mayakovsky tilted his head. “There is one thing I’ve had my eye on, so to speak.”

“And what is that?”

He nodded towards Pekkala’s black coat, which hung from a nail on the wall. Just visible under the lapel was the oval of the emerald eye.

Pekkala breathed out through his teeth. “You drive a hard bargain.”

Mayakovsky smiled. “If I did anything less, I would have no respect for myself.”

“What about your basket?”

“Keep it, Inspector. Think of it as a down payment on that badge of yours.”

37

WHEN PEKKALA HAD FINISHED SHAVING, HE WIPED THE LAST FLECKS of soap from his face, carefully folded the razor, and put it in his pocket. He walked into the kitchen and was surprised to find Anton sitting there with his feet up on the table, reading a copy of Pravda. “Look what I bought,” he said, without looking up.

“That paper is a week old,” said Pekkala.

“Even week-old news is news in a place like this.” Anton folded the paper and slapped it down on the table.

“Mayakovsky was here,” said Pekkala, handing over the basket.

Anton removed a loaf of dark rye bread and gnawed off a piece. “And what did our little house troll want for this?” he asked with his mouth full.

“He says he might know someone who spoke to Katamidze on the night the Romanovs were killed. He might be able to get us a name.”

“Let’s hope,” mumbled Anton, “that he’s more help to us than last time.”

With the contents of the basket-a small partridge, a bottle of milk, some salted butter, and half a dozen eggs- Kirov put together a meal. He chopped up the partridge, tore the bread into crumbs, and mixed them together in a cracked bowl which he found under the sink. Then he kneaded in some butter and the yolks of several eggs. He stoked the stove until the iron plate on top seemed to ripple from the heat. He shaped the mixture into oval cakes and fried them.

Afterwards, the three men sat around the stove, letting the fire die down while they ate with their hands and only their handkerchiefs for plates, scalding their fingers on the hot, buttery cakes.

Pekkala ate as slowly as he could, letting each thread of the taste weave its way through his brain as the cakes dissolved in his mouth.

“My family owned a tavern,” Kirov said, “in a town called Torjuk on the Moscow-Petrograd road. In the old days, with horse carriages passing through all the time, the place was very busy. There were small rooms upstairs for guests, and downstairs the windows were made from pieces of stained glass held together with strips of lead. It smelled of food and smoke. I remember people coming in half frozen from their carriage rides, stamping the snow off their boots and sitting down at the big tables. Coats would pile up by the door in heaps taller than I was. It was always busy in there, and the chef, whose name was Pojarski, had to be ready to cook meals for people whenever they came in, day or night. In winter, when things got quiet and the stove cooled down, Pojarski would sleep on the top of it. But when the Nikolaevsky railroad began running between the two cities, it didn’t pass through Torjuk. The road almost closed down, there were so few carriages traveling on it. But my family kept the tavern open. During the week, Pojarski cooked for the guests, if there were any, but on Sundays he would prepare a meal for me and my parents after we came back from church. This is what he used to cook for me. He seasoned it with vodka and sage and called it a Pojarski cutlet. I looked forward to it all week. What you are eating now is the reason I wanted to become a chef.”

“You went to church?” Anton had wolfed down his food. Now he was wiping the grease from his hands onto his handkerchief. “Not exactly good credentials for a Commissar.”

“Everyone went to church in Torjuk,” replied Kirov. “There were thirty-seven chapels in the town.”

“That’s all gone now,” said Anton.