Siberian Red

alive, a fact of which I am by no means certain, whatever special powers you have granted him will not persuade the Ostyaks. Those men out there will kill you. They do not care about your faith, in God or anyone else. They care about the bread and salt Klenovkin gives them in exchange for your frozen corpses.’
    Sedov only smiled and shook his head.
    ‘Soon you’ll understand,’ said Lavrenov. ‘Just wait until you see the gold.’
    ‘I already have,’ said Pekkala.

It was a Sunday afternoon in August.
     
     
    It was a Sunday afternoon in August.
    Pekkala had been sitting at his kitchen table, trying to read the newspaper. On either side of him lay large bowls filled with ice. In spite of this effort to cool himself down, he was still drenched in sweat. The newspaper stuck to his damp fingers. The ticking of the clock in the next room, which, under normal circumstances, he only ever noticed if it stopped, now seemed to be growing louder, as if a woodpecker was tapping against his skull.
    At the moment when it seemed as if his mood could not get any worse, he received a summons to the Alexander Palace. The message was delivered by a horseman from the Royal Stables. Dressed in a white tunic with red piped collar and cuffs, the rider appeared so dazzling in the glare of sun off the crushed stone pathway, that Pekkala wondered if he might be hallucinating.
    The summons caught Pekkala by surprise, since he had thought the Romanovs were away at their hunting lodge in Poland until the end of the following week. They seemed to have perfectly anticipated the heatwave, which had clamped down on St Petersburg less than a day after the royal train departed for the west.
    ‘The royal family has returned from Spala?’ he asked the horseman.
    ‘Only the Tsar, he came back early.’
    ‘Any idea what this is about?’
    The man shook his head, then saluted and rode away. Horse and rider seemed to merge in the heat haze, until they appeared to have transformed into a single creature.
    Pekkala did not keep a horse, nor did he own a car, so he walked to the Alexander Palace. The route took him along the edge of the Alexander Park. There was no shade along this stretch, since the trees originally planted here obscured the Tsarina’s view of the park from the room where she took breakfast every morning‚ so she’d had them all cut down.
    Head bowed in the heat, Pekkala resembled a man who had lost something small on the ground and was retracing his steps to find it. The blood pounded behind his ears as he walked, stamping out a rhythm in his brain. Pekkala thought of stories he had heard about birds in the city of Florence which, driven mad in the summer heat, flew straight into the ground and killed themselves. He knew exactly how they felt.
    When, at last, Pekkala reached the Alexander Palace, he paused beside the Tsukanov fountain, mesmerised by the glittering cascade of water.
    The Tsarina had commissioned it from the architect Felix Tsukanov, who specialised in fountains and had been making the rounds of royal enclaves in Europe. These days it was no longer fashionable to have a palace without one of his creations.
    The centrepiece was a large, tulip-shaped structure, from which the water spouted in three directions at once, falling into a waist-deep basin decorated with mosaics of Koi fish.
    The Tsar had confided in Pekkala that he hated the fountain. It was noisy and garish. ‘And what is a fountain for, anyway?’ the Tsar had declared in exasperation. ‘The horses won’t even drink from it!’
    Pekkala stood at the edge of the fountain, droplets splashing against his shirt and face. If he had given any thought to what he did next, he never would have done it. Before he knew what was happening, he had climbed into the fountain, without pausing to remove his clothes. He even kept his shoes on. As if compelled by forces beyond his control, he lowered himself into the water until he was sitting on the bottom, and the water rippled above his head.
    He remained there, eyes open, a pearl necklace of bubbles slowly escaping from his lips. It occurred to him that he had discovered the real purpose of this fountain.
    There was no time to return to his cottage, change clothes and make his way back to the palace. A summons from the Tsar required immediate action. And the Tsar, being the Tsar, had probably calculated exactly how long it should take Pekkala to walk the distance.
    With as much dignity as he could manage,