“Where will you go once you’ve escaped,” asked Pekkala, “assuming you can even make it through the gates alive?”
“The border with China isn’t far from here,” Sedov told him. “Once we cross over, we’ll be safe.”
“But until then, you’ll be in the country of the Ostyaks. How do you plan to get past them when no other prisoner has ever succeeded before?”
“The colonel will take care of us,” Sedov answered. “We have waited many years, but at last the day of our deliverance is near.”
“Are you insane?” stammered Pekkala. “Now, listen to me, for the sake of your lives. I admire your loyalty to Colonel Kolchak. No one could have asked from you more than you have already given. But that loyalty has not been repaid. The colonel is gone. He has been gone for a long time. Even if he’s still 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 set eyes on the gold.”
“I already have,” said Pekkala.
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 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 heat wave, 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 or even a bicycle, so he walked to the Alexander Palace. The route took him along the edge of 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, mesmerized by the glittering cascade of water.
The Tsarina had commissioned it from the architect Felix Tsukanov, who specialized 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 centerpiece 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, Pekkala clambered out of the fountain and made his way up the staircase to the palace balcony. With each footstep, water squelched from his shoes.
It was only when Pekkala reached the top of the stairs that he realized the Tsar was sitting on the balcony overlooking the front courtyard and must have witnessed the whole thing.
Pekkala walked over to the table where the Tsar was sipping tea in the shade of a large umbrella. He had been out on his horse and still wore tan riding breeches, along with brown knee-length leather boots. The Tsar had taken off his riding coat, revealing maroon suspenders that stretched over the shoulders of his white, collarless shirt. He seemed completely untroubled by the heat.
“Majesty,” said Pekkala, and bowed his head in greeting.
“Good afternoon, Pekkala. I would offer you something to drink, but you seem to have taken care of that all by yourself.”
In the moment of silence that followed, Pekkala heard the faint tap-tapping of water as it dripped from his sleeves and splashed on the yellowish-white stone of the balcony. The droplets sank into the stone, as if even the rock was thirsty in this heat.
“What brings you back from Spala, Majesty?”
The Tsar smiled mischievously. “Lena has brought me back.”
Pekkala had never heard of anyone named Lena before, at least in connection with the Tsar. As far as he knew, the only woman besides his wife for whom the Tsar harbored any affection was the prima ballerina of the Imperial Russian Ballet, Mathilde Kschessinska. “I look forward to meeting her, Majesty.”
The Tsar, who had been sipping his tea, burst out laughing. The delicate porcelain cup slipped from his fingers, fell to the ground and shattered musically on the stones. “Lena is not a woman!” said the Tsar. He glanced at the broken cup and seemed to be contemplating whether or not to bend down and pick it up.
Pekkala knew that the smashed cup would be swept up by the palace staff and deposited on a garbage heap near the gardener’s compost pile, close by the palace but hidden from view by a line of tall juniper bushes. No matter how slight the chip or blemish, any piece of imperfect crockery from the royal household was immediately taken out of circulation and could never be used again, by the Romanovs or anyone else. It was one of the quirks of the Tsarina that such a policy had gone into effect. To Pekkala it seemed wasteful, but even if he had been offered any of these slightly damaged saucers, bowls, or plates, he would not have wanted them, preferring wooden bowls and metal enamelware cups.
The same was not true of Mr. Gibbs, the English tutor of the Romanov children, who had been discovered one night, sitting in the middle of the crockery pile and hunting for pieces he could use.
“If Lena is not a woman …” began Pekkala.
“Lena is a place!” explained the Tsar, rising to his feet. “Come with me and I will show you.”
