Grodek’s face appeared over the mouth of the pit. “Are you there, Pekkala?”

Pekkala groaned. He took another breath.

“Pekkala!”

“Where is Alexei?”

“Long gone,” Grodek answered. “Don’t worry, Pekkala. There is nothing you could have done. I kept him alive in case I needed a hostage. When I was dumping the bodies, he got out of the truck and tried to run away. I warned him to stop or I’d fire, but Alexei kept running. That’s why I had to shoot. He died the same night as the rest of his family. He is buried at the edge of this field. I had no choice.”

“No choice?” shouted Pekkala. “None of them deserved to die!”

“Neither did Maria Balka,” answered Grodek. “But I do not blame you, Pekkala. I have never considered you my enemy. From that day on the bridge to this, you and I have been on paths which were not of our own making. Whether we chose them or not, our paths have now converged. You have your brother to thank for that. He is the one who contacted me after that lunatic photographer decided to speak up. I would never have allowed him to live except the Tsar insisted upon it. And when Stalin chose to put you on the case, I thought we’d have a chance of locating that gold after all. If I’d only known it wasn’t gold we were looking for, I might have found it sooner.”

“You won’t get what you came for,” said Pekkala. “I know you’re too afraid to come down here.”

“You’re right,” Grodek said. “Instead, you will gather up the gems, put them in that leather bag, and tie it to the end of the rope. Then all I have to do is haul them up.”

“Why would I do that for you?”

“Because if you do, I will get in that car and drive away and you will never see me again. But if you don’t, I will go back into town and finish off the job I started on your brother. I’ll take care of that Commissar as well. I don’t want to do it, Pekkala. I know you think the blood of the Romanovs is on your hands, but the truth is that they brought it on themselves. It is the same with your brother. He has brought this on himself. Even so, he does not deserve to die. He believed you when you told him that you could not find the Tsar’s treasure. But I knew you’d get your hands on it eventually, and I was right. In the meantime, I had to keep threatening him. When he came back from the tavern black and blue, it was because I’d been knocking his head against the wall. When I came up with the idea of impersonating Alexei, he told me he couldn’t go through with it. I said I’d kill you if he mentioned my name. He knew I’d do it, too, so he kept his mouth shut. When you found out for yourself that I was here, he was going to warn you. That’s why I had to shut him up. He saved your life, Pekkala. The least you can do is save his.”

“If I gave you the jewels,” shouted Pekkala, “then what? You would leave me here to rot?”

“They’ll find you. When we’re not back in an hour, that Commissar will go looking for that message in the book. He’ll have you out of here before nightfall, but only if you hurry. Five minutes, Pekkala. That is all I’m giving you. If I don’t have those gems by then, I will leave you here to die among the bodies of your masters. With your brother and Kirov dead, there’ll be no one in Sverdlovsk to find you. By the time they figure it out, you’ll be just another body in the dark.”

“How do I know you’ll keep your word?”

“You don’t,” replied Grodek, “but if you hand me those jewels, I will have what I came for and I won’t hang around here any longer than necessary. Now hurry! Time is running out.”

Pekkala knew he had no choice except to follow Grodek’s instructions.

After groping around on the floor, he eventually found his satchel. He opened the flap, brought out his flashlight, and turned it on.

The mummified and broken faces of the Romanovs loomed out of the dark. They lay as he had left them. Among their rotted clothing, buttons of metal and bone reflected the light.

On his knees before the corpse of the Tsar, Pekkala grabbed the dead man’s tunic in his hands and pulled apart the cloth. It tore easily, sending up a faint cloud of dust as the threads ripped away. Beneath the tunic, Pekkala found a waistcoat made of heavy white cotton, like sailcloth. It looked to him like the kind of protective vest worn by fencers. It was ridged with many rows of stitching. The vest had been fastened with string ties instead of buttons. The knots were tightly done, so he pulled at the strings until they broke. Then, as gently as he could, he laid the Tsar facedown, tore away the tunic, and removed the vest, sliding it up over the skeletal arms. The vest was heavy. He threw it to one side.

“Three minutes, Pekkala!” Grodek called down.

As quickly as he could, Pekkala removed the other vests. They were all of the same construction, each one tailor-made to fit the body of the one who wore it. When the last of them had been removed, Pekkala turned away from the half-naked corpses, their papery flesh shrunk tight across the bones and framed by shreds of decayed clothing.

“One minute, Pekkala!”

He stuffed the vests into the satchel, but only half of them would fit. “You’ll have to throw the satchel down again. There’s more than I can send up in one bag.”

“Tie it to the rope!”

Soon the leather satchel lifted jerkily into the air, scraping against the walls as it rose to the surface.

He heard Grodek laughing.

A moment later, the empty satchel slapped into the dirt, trailing the snake of hemp rope.

Pekkala packed in the remainder of the vests and they were also lifted to the surface.

Far in the distance he heard a gunshot, the sound like a dry twig snapping. It was coming from above ground. Then someone shouted. Anton was calling his name.

Pekkala struggled to his feet.

Now he could hear Grodek’s voice, and Kirov ’s too, their shouting interspersed with blasts of gunfire. He squinted up into the patch of light which marked the entrance to the tunnel. There was a scream, and suddenly the light flickered. Pekkala saw what looked like a huge black bird. It was a man, falling. He barely had time to step back before the body slammed into the ground.

Pekkala rushed to where the man lay on his face. He could not tell who it was. Turning over the body, he realized it was Anton. His body had been horribly broken by the fall. Anton’s eyes blinked open. He coughed up blood and gasped. Then he raised one hand and took hold of Pekkala’s arm. Pekkala held on to him, while Anton’s grip became weaker. In those last moments, as his brother’s life unspooled into darkness, Pekkala’s thoughts drifted back to when he and Anton were children, sledding on the woodcutter’s hill. It seemed to Pekkala that he could even hear their laughter, and the whispering of the sleds as they raced over the frozen ground. Finally, Anton’s breath trailed out in a sigh. His fingers slipped away. And the image which had been so clear in Pekkala’s mind only a moment before dissolved into particles of gray, spreading farther and farther apart until finally the picture was lost and he knew that his brother was dead.

Pekkala’s whole body went numb. The pain in his rope-burned hands and from his knees and his shoulders and his back all merged into a ringing emptiness inside him. His heart seemed to be slowing down, like a pendulum swinging to a stop. He felt his whole life circle back towards its source, to that intersecting point at which a person either dies or must begin again. He closed his eyes and, in the blind man’s black, Pekkala felt death spread its arms around him.

Then he heard a whispering in the air. The rope slapped down beside him. “Hold on,” Kirov called to him. “I’ll get you out.”

Once more, Pekkala closed his hands around the gritty hemp. The pain returned, but he forced himself to ignore it. Above, he heard an engine fire up and then he felt himself lifted off the ground. As his feet left the earth, he glanced down at his brother, laid out beside the bodies of the Romanovs, as if he had been with them all along. Then the black walls of the mine shaft closed over them.