Siberian Red

situation was hopeless. The others knew it, too. No one had to say the words. He could see it on their faces. He looked at the gold bars, which lay strewn across the scorched and trampled ground, and thought of how close he and the Comitati had come to living out their lives as free men. Tarnowski was right. There would be no prisoners this time. There was nothing to do but fight it out until the last of them was dead.
    With his eyes fixed on the lustre of the ingots, Pekkala fell backwards through time, to when he had last seen this treasure.
    *
     
    Deep beneath the Alexander Palace, hidden in the stone vault of his treasure room, the Tsar placed his hands against the neatly stacked bars of the latest gold shipment from the Lena mines.
    To Pekkala, he looked like a man trying to push open a heavy door, as if that wall of gold would give way into another room, or perhaps another world.
    ‘Excellency,’ whispered Pekkala.
    The Tsar turned suddenly, as if he had forgotten he was not alone. ‘Yes?’
    ‘I must he getting back.’
    ‘Of course.’ The Tsar nodded his approval. ‘Be on your way, old friend.’
    Pekkala began to climb the winding stone staircase which led to the ground floor of the palace. After a few steps, he paused and looked back.
    The Tsar stood at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at him.
    ‘Will you be staying, Majesty?’ inquired Pekkala.
    ‘You go on ahead, Pekkala,’ said the Tsar. ‘I have yet to count the shipment. Every bar must be accounted for. This is a task I trust to no one else.’
    ‘Very well, Majesty.’ Pekkala bowed his head and turned away. He continued up the narrow stone stairs. Just as he reached the main hall, he heard the Tsar’s voice calling to him from the bowels of the earth.
    ‘Remember, Pekkala! Only the chosen will be saved.’
     Pekkala did not reply. Silently, he walked along the hall, where his own wet footsteps still glistened on the polished floor, and out into the pitiless heat of that August afternoon.
    *
     
    Faintly in the distance, Pekkala heard the sound of a locomotive.
    Moments later, the three men glimpsed the dull grey snout of an armoured engine barely visible among the ranks of pines.
     Lavrenov began to panic. ‘Those men up on the cliff were only keeping our heads down until the reinforcements arrived. There’s no way out of this. We’re as good as dead.’
    ‘Just try to take one with you,’ ordered Tarnowski.
    Both men seemed resigned to their deaths.
    ‘You could run,’ Pekkala said quietly.
    ‘With those men after us?’ Tarnowski laughed bitterly. ‘How far do you think we would get?’
    ‘Once they set eyes on the gold,’ Pekkala told him, ‘they won’t be thinking about anything else.’
    ‘You talk as if you aren’t coming with us.’ Tarnowski was staring at him.
    ‘Stalin might be persuaded that your freedom is the price to be paid for getting his hands on the gold, but my escape brings him no such reward. If I go with you, he will pursue us to the ends of the earth.’
    Lavrenov gripped Tarnowski’s arm. ‘Let’s do what he says and get out of here now.’
    ‘What about the gold?’ For the first time, Tarnowski seemed completely overwhelmed. ‘You can’t expect us just to leave it all here, not after what we’ve been through.’
    ‘Not all of it,’ replied Pekkala. ‘How much gold does one man really need?’
    *
     
    The train was close now.
    Worried that he might not reach the locomotive before it passed, Gramotin lumbered down the steep slope. Half running, half falling, swamped with snow, he tumbled out at last on to the rails.
    The engine slowed as it rounded a curve on the tracks. Then its motor roared, regaining speed and trailing a cloud of snow dust which rose like wings behind the train.
    Gramotin raised his rifle above his head and began waving his arms back and forth, all the while shouting at the top of his lungs to attract the attention of the driver.
    The engine changed pitch suddenly. The great machine was slowing down. They had seen him. The sound of brakes filled the air with a ringing clash of steel.
    As the train came to a stop, Gramotin stared in awe at the overlapping plates of armour, the heavy machine guns jutting from their turrets and the ice-encrusted battering ram mounted in front of the driver’s compartment. Painted on the front of the engine, he glimpsed a name in large white letters. Even though Gramotin could barely read or write it took him only a moment to