Siberian Red

thought he knew.
    The agents who died that day were all strangers to Pekkala. All except the young officer, whose name he’d never learned. And afterwards, Pekkala had done what Vassileyev had taught him to do with memories of the dead. He had filed them away in the great archive deep in the labyrinth of his mind, and left them there to fade away, like photographs abandoned in the sun.

Now Pekkala wondered
     
     
    Now Pekkala wondered if the young officer had died, after all.
    ‘I need to see Ryabov’s body again,’ he told Klenovkin.
    ‘What? Now?’
    ‘Yes!’
    ‘But what if Melekov is still in the kitchen?’
    ‘He won’t be. Melekov goes back to bed as soon as his shift is finished.’
    Klenovkin’s eyebrows bobbed up in surprise. ‘Back to bed? He’s not allowed to do that in the middle of the day!’
    ‘Nevertheless . . .’
    ‘That lazy Siberian piece of…’
    ‘Please, Commandant. It is crucial that I see the body immediately.’
    Leaving Kirov’s telegram on the desk, the two men made their way to the kitchen.
    Klenovkin opened the freezer with his master key.
    Inside, at the back, Pekkala pushed aside the wall of vodka crates. Ryabov’s corpse was still there, lying on the floor under a tarpaulin.
    Crouching down, Pekkala pulled back the tarp, whose ice-encrusted contours retained the shape of Ryabov’s face.
    The shadows made it difficult to see.
    ‘Do you have a match?’ Pekkala asked.
    Klenovkin pulled a box from his pocket and handed it down.
    Pekkala struck a match and held it close to Ryabov’s hand. In the quivering light, he glimpsed the crookedly healed thumb and index finger of the Okhrana officer he had met years ago, on their way to the Moika Canal. As a pawn in this game of trust between Kolchak and the Tsar‚ Agent Ryabov had played his role to the end.
    For a long time, Pekkala stared into the dead man’s face – the alabaster skin, sunken eyes and blue-black lips. He could not shake the feeling that he was staring at himself. ‘See you on the other side,’ he murmured, and his breath uncoiled like silk into the still and frozen air.
    ‘What?’ asked Klenovkin. ‘What did you say?’
    ‘I knew this man,’ replied Pekkala. ‘I thought he had died long ago.’
    ‘Well, he’s dead now, anyway.’ Klenovkin tapped Pekkala on the shoulder. ‘Come on, let’s get the hell out of here.’
    On their way back to Klenovkin’s office, Pekkala tried to fathom why on earth Vassileyev would have lied to him about this officer having survived the blast.
    The answer soon became clear when Pekkala read the remainder of the telegram.
    RYABOV COMMISSIONED BY TSAR TO MONITOR KOLCHAK EXPEDITION STOP ACTIVITY OF AGENT RYABOV NOT DISCLOSED TO OKHRANA STOP
    The reason Vassileyev had not told Pekkala that there were survivors from the bomb at Grodek’s house was that he did not know of any. But the Tsar had not only lied to his own Director of Intelligence. He had lied to Pekkala as well.
    The Tsar’s story had been very specific. He had told Pekkala that the precise location of the gold would be known only to Colonel Kolchak and his uncle‚ Admiral Alexander Kolchak of the Tsar’s Pacific fleet in Vladivostok. Even the Tsar himself was not to be told. There was good reason for this. Although the Tsar was confident that Kolchak could evade any attempt at capture by the Red Guards, the Tsar was equally certain that he himself would soon fall into captivity. And the first thing his captors would want to know was the location of the Imperial Reserves. Unless the Bolsheviks could be convinced that the Tsar didn’t know the whereabouts of his gold, they would resort to whatever means necessary to acquire that information.
    For the Tsar, the trick would be in persuading these captors of his ignorance before they even asked the question.
    Now an idea began to surface in Pekkala’s mind. At first, it seemed so sinister that he felt sure this couldn’t be the answer. But the more Pekkala thought about this, the more convinced he became that it was true. The Tsar must have known that if Pekkala were arrested, he would be interrogated using whatever means the Bolshevik Security Service, known as the Cheka, thought necessary. For a man like Pekkala, in the hands of the Cheka, torture was a guarantee. The Bolsheviks would realise, as they beat and starved and questioned him, that Pekkala was telling the truth when he said that neither he nor the Tsar was aware of the gold’s hiding