The Red Coffin (17 page)

‘God protect us!’ wept the Tsarina. ‘God protect us. God protect
us.’

Early one morning in January 1917, in the crypt of the private
Fyodorov chapel, the body of Rasputin was laid to rest.

The only people present were the Tsar, the Tsarina, their chil
dren, a priest and Pekkala, who was there for security, since the
service was being held in secret.

After the discovery of Rasputin’s corpse in the Neva river,
the Tsarina had ordered that Rasputin should be buried in his
home village of Pokrovskoye, in Siberia. The Minister of the
Interior, Alexander Protopopov, persuaded her that the hostility
towards Rasputin, even in death, would guarantee that his body
would never reach its destination, so she decided to bury him in
secret on the grounds of the Tsarskoye Selo estate.

It was an open-coffin service, but Rasputin’s face had been
covered with a white cloth. This was to hide the bullet hole in
the middle of his forehead, which no amount of undertaker’s skill
could obscure.

This bullet hole had been made by a different weapon
from the other three found in his body. It was Chief Inspector
Vassileyev who had alerted Pekkala to the discrepancy. ‘We have
a big problem,’ he said.

‘That Rasputin was shot by more than one gun?’ asked
Pekkala. They already had two men in temporary custody. Prince
Felix Yusupov had immediately confessed to the crime, along
with Lazovert, the army doctor. There were other suspects, in
cluding the Grand Duke Dimitri Pavlovitch, but it was
the Tsar himself who made clear to theOkhrana investigators,
Pekkala included, that none of these men would ever be brought
to trial. Given this fact, the number of bullet holes in Rasputin’s
body hardly seemed to matter.

‘It’s not simply that two weapons were used,’ Vassileyev told
Pekkala. ‘It is the type of gun which caused this.’ He pressed a
finger to his forehead, where the bullet had entered Rasputin’s
skull. ‘Our chief medical examiner has determined that the head
wound was made by a soft-sided bullet. Every type of gun firing
that calibre of bullet uses a hard copper casing. Every type except
one.’ Now Vassileyev pointed at Pekkala’s chest, where his revolver
rested in its shoulder holster. ‘Fetch it out.’

Confused, Pekkala did as he was told.

Vassileyev took the gun, opened the chamber and emptied the
large .455 calibre bullets out on to the table.

‘Do you mean somebody thinks I played a part in this?’ asked
Pekkala.

‘No!’ growled Vassileyev. ‘Look at the bullets! Soft-sided. The
only weapon commonly available in this size and with this kind
of ammunition is the British Webley revolver, the same kind the
Tsar gave to you as a present, and which he received from his
cousin King George the Fifth of England.’

‘The British murdered Rasputin?’

Vassileyev shrugged. ‘They had a hand in it, Pekkala. That
much is almost certain.’

‘But why?’

‘They were not fond of Rasputin. It was on that lunatic’s
insistence that several British advisers were sent home in
disgrace.’

‘Is that why the investigation has been halted?’

‘Halted?’ laughed Vassileyev. ‘The investigation was never
begun. What I’ve just told you will never be written in the history
books. In the future, Pekkala, they will not squabble over who
killed Rasputin. Instead, they will be asking who didn’t.’

Throughout the short burial service, Pekkala stood by the
half-open door of the church, looking out across the grounds of
Tsarskoye Selo. The smell of sandalwood incense blew past him
and out into the freezing air.

It was cold in the chapel. No fires had been lit. The Romanovs
stood in fur coats while the priest read the eulogy. Throughout
this, the Tsarina wept, a lace handkerchief clenched in her fist
and pressed against her mouth to hide her sobbing.

Glancing back from the door, Pekkala watched the daughters
lay a painted icon on Rasputin’s chest. The Tsar and Alexei stood
off to one side, grim faced but detached.

‘Where is the justice in this?’ shrieked the Tsarina, as the lid of
the coffin was closed.

The priest stepped back in alarm.

The Tsar took hold of his wife’s arm. ‘It’s over,’ he told her.
‘There is nothing more we can do.’

She collapsed into his arms and sobbed against his chest. She
began her chant again. ‘God protect us. God protect us.’

Pekkala wondered what that meant for the man in the box,
whose brains had been blown through his skull.

As the Romanovs left the church, Pekkala stood outside the
door to let them pass.

The Tsarina swept past him, then stopped and turned. ‘I’ve
been meaning to thank you,’ she whispered, ‘for keeping us safe
here on earth. Now I have two guardians. One here and one
who’s up above.’

Looking into the Tsarina’s bloodshot eyes, Pekkala remembered
what Rasputin had told him, that night he came in from the
cold.

‘You see, Pekkala,’ he had said, ‘the reason I am loved by the
Tsarina is that I am exactly what she wants me to be. Just as she
needs me now to be beside her, the time will come when she will
need me to be gone.’

Once more, the Tsar took hold of his wife’s arm. ‘Our friend
is gone now,’ he murmured in her ear. ‘We should be going too.’

There was an expression on his face which Pekkala had never
seen before – some blur of fear and resignation – as if the Tsar
had glimpsed, through some tear in the fabric of time, the spectre
of his own fast-approaching doom.

Pekkala watched as Kropotkin crossed the road, disappearing in the misty veils of rain.

Then he went back to the office.

An hour later, when Kirov had still not returned, he began to grow nervous. There had been so many arrests this past year that no one could feel safe, no matter what rank they held or how innocent they were. The way Pekkala saw it, the same idealism that made Kirov a good upholder of the law also made the young man vulnerable to how randomly enforced that law could be. Pekkala had seen it before – the stronger the convictions, the greater the distance between the world as these people envisaged it and the world as it really was.

At the same time, Pekkala knew that Kirov might take it as a lack of confidence if he went searching for him now.

So Pekkala continued to wait in the office, as evening shadows crept about the room. Before long, he found himself in total darkness. By now, there was no point heading home for the night, so he put his feet up on the desk, folded his hands across his stomach, and tried to fall asleep.

But he couldn’t.

Instead, Pekkala paced around the room, studying Kirov’s potted plants. Now and then, he paused to pick a cherry tomato or to chew on a basil leaf.

Finally, with an hour still to go before the sun came up, Pekkala put on his coat and left the building, on his way to Kirov’s apartment.

It was a long walk, almost an hour through the winding streets. He could have made the journey in ten minutes by taking the subway, but Pekkala preferred to remain above ground in spite of the fact that there were no reliable maps of the city. The only charts available for Moscow showed either what the city had looked like before the Revolution or what the city was supposed to look like when all of the new construction projects had been finished. Most of these had not even begun, and there were whole city blocks which, on these maps, bore no resemblance to what actually stood on the ground. Many streets had been renamed, as had entire cities around the country. Petrograd was Leningrad, Tsaritsin was Stalingrad. As the locals said in Moscow – everything is different but nothing has really changed.

Pekkala was walking along the edge of Gorki Park when a car pulled up alongside him. Before the car, a black GAZ-M1 saloon, had even stopped, the passenger side door flew open and a man jumped out.

Without thinking about it, Pekkala drew his gun.

By the time the man’s feet were on the ground, he was already looking down the blue-eyed barrel of Pekkala’s revolver.

The man wore round glasses, balanced on a long, thin nose. Beard stubble made a blue haze under his pasty skin.

To Pekkala, he looked a like a big, pink rat.

The expression of angry determination on the man’s face gave way to stunned disbelief. Slowly, he raised his hands. ‘You are going to wish you hadn’t done that, Comrade,’ he said quietly.

It was only now that Pekkala got a good look at him. Even though he wore plain clothes, Pekkala knew immediately that the man was NKVD. It was the way he carried himself and his look of perpetual disdain. Pekkala had been so worried about Kirov being hauled in on some random charge that he had not stopped to consider the same thing might happen to him. ‘What do you want?’ he asked.

‘Put that down!’ snapped the man.

‘Give me an answer,’ replied Pekkala calmly, ‘if you want to keep your brains in your head.’

‘Are you licensed to carry that antique?’

Pekkala set his thumb on the hammer and pulled it back until it cocked. ‘I’m licensed to use it as well,’ he said.

Now the man shrugged his right shoulder, revealing a gun in a holster tucked under his armpit. ‘You’re not the only person with a gun.’

‘Go ahead,’ replied Pekkala, ‘and let’s see what happens next.’

‘Why don’t you just show me your papers!’

Without lowering the Webley, Pekkala reached inside his coat, removed his pass book and held it out.

‘You’re NKVD?’ asked the man.

‘See for yourself.’

Slowly, the rat man took it from his hand and opened it.

‘What’s taking so long?’ said a voice. Then the driver of the car climbed out. ‘
Svoloch
!’ he shouted when he saw Pekkala’s revolver, and struggled to draw his own gun.

‘Don’t,’ said Pekkala.

But it was too late. The man’s Tokarev was now aimed squarely at Pekkala.

Pekkala kept his own weapon pointed at the rat man.

For a moment, the three men just stood there.

‘Let’s just all of us calm down and see what we’ve got here,’ said the rat man, as he opened Pekkala’s identification book.

A long period of silence followed.

‘What’s the matter?’ demanded the driver, his gun still aimed at Pekkala. ‘What the hell is going on?’

The rat-faced man cleared his throat. ‘He’s got a Shadow Pass.’

The driver looked suddenly lost, like a sleepwalker who had woken up in a different part of town.

‘It’s Pekkala,’ said the rat-faced man.

‘What?’

‘Inspector Pekkala, you idiot! From Special Operations.’

‘It was your idea to stop!’ complained the driver. Uttering another curse, he stuffed his gun back into its holster as if the weapon had drawn itself against his wishes.

The rat-faced man closed Pekkala’s ID book. ‘Our apologies, Inspector,’ he said as he handed it back.

Only now did Pekkala lower his gun. ‘I’m taking this car,’ he told them.

‘Our car?’ asked the driver, his face turning pale.

‘Yes,’ replied Pekkala. ‘I am requisitioning your vehicle.’ He walked around to the driver’s side.

‘You can’t do that!’ said the driver. ‘This car belongs to us!’

‘Be quiet, you idiot!’ shouted the rat man. ‘Didn’t you hear me? I said he had a Shadow Pass. We can’t detain him. We can’t question him. We can’t even ask him the bloody time of day! He is licensed to shoot you and no one’s even allowed to ask him why he did it. He’s also permitted to requisition
anything he chooses – our weapons, our car. He can leave you standing naked in the street if he wants to.’

‘It pulls a little to the left,’ said the driver. ‘The carburettor needs adjusting.’

‘Shut up and get out of his way!’ the rat-faced man yelled again.

As if jolted by an electric shock, the driver tossed Pekkala the keys.

Pekkala got behind the wheel. The last he saw of the two men, they were standing on the pavement, arguing. He drove the rest of the way to Kirov’s apartment on Prechistenka street. Then he just sat in the car for a while, hands still on the wheel, trying to stop breathing so hard.

‘When guns are drawn,’ said Chief Inspector Vassileyev, ‘you must
never show fear. A man with a gun aimed at you is more likely
to pull the trigger if he sees you are afraid.’

At the end of every day of his training with the Okhrana, the
Tsar’s Secret Police, Pekkala would report to Vassileyev. The pro
cedures Pekkala learned from other agents transformed him into
an investigator, but what he learned from Vassileyev saved his life.

‘Surely,’ argued Pekkala, ‘if I show I am afraid, I would be less
of a threat to someone with a gun.’

‘I am not talking about what should happen,’ replied Vas
sileyev, ‘I am talking about what will happen.’

Even though the Chief Inspector always seemed to talk in
riddles, Pekkala looked forward to the time he spent with
Vassileyev. His office was small and comfortable, with lithographs
of hunting scenes and antique weaponry hung on the walls.
Vassileyev spent most of his time here, poring over reports and
receiving visitors. As a younger man, he had gained a reputation
for going about the city on foot, often in disguise. It was said
that no one could hide from Vassileyev in Petrograd, because he
knew every corner of the city. Those days came to an end one day
as he was walking down the steps of the police building in order
to meet the head of the Moscow Okhrana, who had just arrived
by car. Vassileyev had almost reached the vehicle when a bomb,
thrown through the window on the other side, exploded. The
Moscow chief was killed instantly and Vassileyev sustained inju
ries that put him behind a desk for the rest of his career.