Archive 17 (31 page)

“Those men deserve to be told,” said Pekkala, nodding towards Lavrenov and Tarnowski, “and told now.”

“They will be, as soon as they have finished.”

“Have you considered the possibility that they might not want to go through with it?”

“Of course,” replied Kolchak. “That’s why I am telling you first. These men know that you were trusted by the Tsar. If you are with me, they will be as well. Think of it, my friend. We won’t just be living like kings. Kings are what we will
be
!”

But all Pekkala could think about was the lives which would be lost if he stood by and did nothing. He remembered the Tsar, driven to the brink of madness by the dead from the Kodynka field, the men and women he believed he could have saved whirling in a ceaseless and macabre dance inside the white-walled palace of his skull.

It took both men to raise the first crate from the ground. As they lifted it, the rotten wood gave way. With dull, metallic clanks, ingots tumbled out into the snow. Other crates followed quickly, wrenched from the dirt and dragged clear of the steaming ground.

“Did it not occur to you,” asked Pekkala, “that I might agree with Ryabov?”

Kolchak laughed, certain that Pekkala must be joking. “We are all of us entitled to vengeance, but none more than you, Pekkala.”

“Vengeance has become the purpose of
your
life, Kolchak, but not of mine.”

Kolchak’s smile faded as he grasped that Pekkala was serious. “I trusted you! I broke you out of that prison. I gave you the coat off my back—and this is how you repay me? The Tsar would be ashamed of you.”

“The Tsar is dead, Kolchak, and so is the world in which he lived. You cannot bring it back by spilling blood. If you have your way, the rivers of Siberia will soon be choked with corpses. And if Germany invades in the west, millions more people will die. By the time your vengeance has been satisfied, Russia will cease to exist. Your uncle did not die for that.”

Kolchak’s eyes glazed with rage. “But you will, Inspector Pekkala.”

Almost too late, Pekkala saw the knife. He grabbed Kolchak’s wrist as the weapon flickered past his face.

With his other hand balled into a fist, Kolchak struck Pekkala in the throat, sending him down in a heap onto the trampled snow.

While Pekkala fought for breath, Kolchak raised the blade above his head, ready to plunge it into the center of Pekkala’s chest.

W
HEN THE TWO MEN EMERGED
onto the ice, Gramotin could scarcely believe his good luck. Shielding his eyes with one dirty hand, he strained to make out who they were. Even though their faces were unclear, he could still see the numbers painted in white on their faded black jackets. One of them was 4745. “Pekkala,” he muttered to himself. The other, he decided, must be Lavrenov, since he was neither bald nor the size of Tarnowski.

Lavrenov and Pekkala seemed to be involved in a heated conversation. Pekkala, who did most of the talking, even grabbed Lavrenov by the arm.

With trembling fingers, Gramotin slid back the bolt of his rifle and double-checked that he had a round in the breech.

Now the two men appeared to be arguing.

The next thing Gramotin saw was that Pekkala had drawn a knife. Suddenly, Pekkala struck Lavrenov, who fell in a heap in the snow. As Pekkala prepared to finish off the wounded Lavrenov, Gramotin felt a sudden rush of pity for the man, to have come this far only to be killed by the very person who had convinced him to escape in the first place.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Gramotin lined up the sight, right in the center of Pekkala’s back, and pulled the trigger. The gun stock bucked into his shoulder. After so much time spent with no other sound but his own breathing, he was deafened by the noise of the gunshot. It echoed back and forth between the forest and the cliff, as if guns were firing from all directions. For a moment, Gramotin lost sight of the men, but when he raised his head above the sights, he saw that Pekkala was down and a splash of blood had darkened the snow beside the fallen man.

Lavrenov, meanwhile, had scrambled away into the trees. Gramotin’s mind was in an uproar. His whole body trembled and a cackling, nervous laugh escaped his lips. He had done it. He had killed Pekkala.

This laughter ceased abruptly as it occurred to Gramotin that he needed the inspector’s body as proof of what he had done. Without it, doubt would be cast upon his story. Determined to kill as many of the Comitati as he could, and force the rest to leave Pekkala’s corpse behind, Gramotin began to fire round after round into the smoke. When the rifle’s magazine was empty, he rolled over onto his back and removed a handful of bullets from his bandolier.

As he hurriedly reloaded the rifle, Gramotin heard a noise which, at first, he mistook for thunder—although in the middle of winter that would have been unlikely. Perhaps it is an avalanche, he thought. The mysterious sound grew, filling the sky, vibrating the ground beneath his shoulder blades until, suddenly, Gramotin realized what it
was. Immediately, old nightmares reared up in his mind and a choking sensation clamped down on his throat. Squinting into the distance, he spotted a train approaching from the east.

It took a moment before Gramotin was able to comprehend that, in fact, the arrival of this train was the best thing that could possibly happen to him. It meant that help was on the way. All trains on the Trans-Siberian carried a contingent of armed guards. These men would assist him in rounding up the last of the Comitati. For certain, they would be amazed to find him there, a solitary warrior, having pursued these escaped convicts across the taiga before cornering them in the forest. They, not he, would be the ones to tell the story of his heroic journey. He no longer needed to concern himself with any Dalstroy board of inquiry. They would not be punishing him. Instead, they would shower him with honors. There would be a promotion. That much was certain. Master Sergeant Gramotin. They might even make him an officer. There would also be a medal. But which one? Hero of the Soviet Union, perhaps. All he had to do was go down there and tell that train to stop.

W
HEN THE NOISE
of the first gunshot echoed through the trees, Pekkala dove for cover into the frozen reeds.

Tarnowski was waiting for him on the other side, a rifle in his hand. “The colonel?”

Through the brittle screen of rushes, both men looked out onto the pond. Kolchak’s open eyes stared blindly back at them. A round had hit him in the shoulder, leaving a gaping tear just under the right armpit as the bullet left his body.

Pekkala glimpsed a muzzle flash from the cliff, just as another round slammed into the ice on the pond, filling the air with a strange popping sound, like the cork coming out of a champagne bottle.

Pekkala and Tarnowski crawled back among the trees, where
they found Lavrenov hiding in the hole from which they had dug out the crates. “Where’s the colonel?” he asked.

“They got him with the first shot,” replied Pekkala.

Bullets hacked through the branches above them, showering the men with pine needles.

“There must be a dozen of them out there,” whimpered Lavrenov, “to judge from all that fire.”

“But who are they?” asked Pekkala.

“Whoever they are,” Tarnowski answered, “they’re using army rifles.”

Pekkala realized that their 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.

With his eyes fixed on the luster 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
.

F
AINTLY IN THE DISTANCE
, Pekkala heard the sound of a locomotive. Moments later, the three men glimpsed the dull gray snout of an armored 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,” said Tarnowski.

Both men seemed resigned to their deaths.

“You could run,” Pekkala suggested quietly.

Tarnowski shook his head. “With those men after us, how far do you think we would get?”

“Once they set eyes on the gold, 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?”

T
HE 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 onto 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 armor, 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 spell out the word
ORLIK
.

Gramotin swore he must be dreaming, but the shaking of the ground beneath his feet proved otherwise. “No,” he mumbled. “Not you. Not again!” He could almost hear the terrible clanking rattle
of the Czech machine guns as they strafed the foxholes where he lay with his platoon. He flinched as he recalled the whip-crack sound of bullets passing just above his head. He smelled pine sap from the gashed trees, mixing with the burnt-hair reek of cordite from the guns. He pressed his hands against his ears, trying to block out the terrible noise of bullets striking bodies, like that of a cleaver hacking into meat. Gramotin closed his eyes as tightly as he could, in a last, desperate attempt to banish these visions from his skull, but when he looked again, the train was even closer than before.

Convinced that his nightmares had finally sprung to life, the sergeant turned and fled.

“G
O
!”
SAID
P
EKKALA
. “There isn’t much time.”

Lavrenov did not hesitate. Snatching up a gold bar in each hand, he vanished into the forest.

But Tarnowski had not moved.

“You must leave now!” urged Pekkala.

“I saw what happened,” said Tarnowski, “out there on the pond. Kolchak was going to kill you.”

Pekkala nodded. “If it hadn’t been for that gunman on the cliff …”

“That gunman didn’t shoot the colonel. I did.”

The revelation stunned Pekkala. “But why?” he demanded.

“I heard what he was planning to do,” explained Tarnowski. “I don’t care if Kolchak wanted a fight with Stalin. Unlike you and Captain Ryabov, I have no love for Russia or mankind. This whole country can go up in flames as far as I’m concerned.”

“Then why did you ever become a soldier?”

“Because I was good at it! War was my job, just as police work was yours, and I expected to be paid for doing it. I am owed, Pekkala, not only for the expedition but for every day I spent at Borodok, especially since we never should have been there! If the colonel
hadn’t insisted on bringing an entire wagonload of treasure with us when we departed from the city of Kazan, instead of leaving all three wagons behind as we should have done, we could have outrun the Bolsheviks. At least we would have saved ourselves. Instead, I ended up in Borodok, along with the rest of Kolchak’s men. My share of the gold is fair wages for spending half my life in that hellhole. And I’ll be damned if Kolchak was going to spend it on another war.”