Kropotkin reached across to shake Pekkala’s hand.
“What brings you to Moscow?” asked Pekkala.
“Well, as you can see”—he gave an awkward laugh—“I am no longer a chief of police.”
The taxi driver was still trying to read Pekkala’s paper.
Pekkala could feel the man’s breath on his cheek. He picked up the paper and handed it to the taxi driver.
The driver grunted thanks, took the paper, and resumed slurping his soup.
Pekkala turned back to Kropotkin. “What happened? Were you reassigned? Did you quit?”
“Dismissed,” answered Kropotkin, “for striking the district commissar.”
“Ah,” Pekkala nodded slowly, not entirely surprised that Kropotkin would do such a thing. He seemed the type to dispense justice with a truncheon rather than with a court case.
“I’m better off now,” said Kropotkin. “No more petty officials to deal with! I came here and trained as a heavy machinery operator at the Moscow Technical Institute. I can operate pretty much anything now. Heavy transport vehicles. Tractors. Bulldozers. Cranes.”
“And which one did you choose?” asked Pekkala, intrigued.
“I drive a Hanomag from one end of this country to the other.”
Pekkala had heard about the Hanomags. These German-made trucks were capable of moving vast amounts of cargo. In the past few years, with huge road-building projects under way, trucking routes had opened up all the way from the Baltic to the Black Sea and from the Polish border to Siberia.
“Most of the highways in this country are still made out of dirt. As long as there’s a road, I’ll drive on it. When I’m in town this is where I come,” Kropotkin said, glancing warily into his bowl, “no matter what Bruno serves up.”
“This was one of the Tsarina’s favorite meals,” said Pekkala.
“This!” Kropotkin held up his fork, on which he had speared a chunk of meat whose origin appeared suspicious. “Well, I find that hard to believe.”
“She once ate chicken cutlets twice a day for a month,” said Pekkala.
Kropotkin stared at him for a moment. Then he laughed. “With all the beluga in the world to choose from, you are telling me she ate chicken cutlets all day long?”
Pekkala nodded.
Kropotkin shook his head. “No, Pekkala. That cannot be true.”
Like many others, Kropotkin had created for himself an image of the Romanovs which existed only in his head.
Pekkala wondered what Kropotkin would have thought of the drearily furnished rooms in the Alexander Palace, where the Romanovs lived at Tsarskoye Selo. Or of the Tsar’s three daughters, dressed as they always were in identical clothes—one day in striped sailor’s shirts, another day in blue and white polka-dot dresses—or of the Tsarevich Alexei, who once ordered a company of soldiers to march into the sea? Which would have offended him more: the behavior of the little prince or that of the soldiers, who strode into the waves with the obedience of clockwork toys?
For the new generation of Russians, Nicholas Romanov had been transformed into a ghoul. But for men like Kropotkin, whose loyalties belonged to a time before the Revolution, the Tsar and his family were the subjects of a fairy tale. The truth, if there even was such a thing anymore, lay somewhere in between.
“The last time we spoke,” said Kropotkin with a smile, “you said you were leaving the country.”
“Yes,” said Pekkala, “that had been my intention.”
“There was a woman, wasn’t there?” asked Kropotkin.
Pekkala nodded. “She is in Paris. I am in Moscow. Many years have passed.”
Kropotkin pushed away his half-finished bowl of food. “It’s stuffy in here. Will you walk outside with me?”
Pekkala, too, had lost his appetite.
As they stood up from the table, the taxi driver reached across, hooked one dirty thumb over the lip of Kropotkin’s bowl and dragged it back towards him.
The two men stepped out into the street. A fine rain was falling. They turned up the collars of their coats.
“Still working for them?” asked Kropotkin.
“Them?”
He jerked his chin towards the domes of the Kremlin, visible above the rooftops in the distance. “Special Operations.”
“I do the same work as I have always done,” replied Pekkala.
“No regrets?” asked Kropotkin, walking with his hands shoved in his pockets.
“About what?”
“About staying here in this country. About not leaving when you could.”
“This is where I belong,” replied Pekkala.
“Let me ask you, Pekkala. Do you stay because you want to? Or because you have to?”
“Well, if you are asking me whether I could simply depart on the next train out of Russia, I admit that might prove complicated.”
Kropotkin laughed. “Listen to you! Listen to the language you are using. You couldn’t get out of here even if you wanted to.” Now he stopped and turned to face Pekkala. “You and I are the last of the old guard. This world will never see the likes of us again. We owe it to ourselves to stick together.”
“What are you trying to say, Kropotkin?”
“What if I told you I could help you escape?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Yes, you do, Pekkala. You understand exactly what I’m saying. I drive my truck all over Russia. I know the highways of this country like the creases in my palm. I know roads that aren’t even on the map, roads that wind back and forth across borders because they are centuries older than the borders themselves. I know where there are checkpoints and where there aren’t.” Removing one hand from the pocket of his coat, he clasped Pekkala by the arm. “I can get you out of here, old friend. The time must come when you will have to choose between the actions that your job requires and what your conscience will allow.”
“So far,” said Pekkala, “I have been able to live with myself.”
“But when you do come up against that wall, remember your old friend Kropotkin. With my help, you can start your life over and never look back.”
In that moment, Pekkala did not feel Kropotkin’s grip upon his arm. Instead, it seemed to him as if a hand were clasped around his throat. He had resigned himself to staying here. At least, he’d thought he had. But now, with Kropotkin’s words ringing in his ears, Pekkala realized that the notion of escape was still alive in him. He knew that Kropotkin’s offer was genuine, and that the man could do what he promised. All Pekkala had to do was say the words.
“Are you all right, brother?” Kropotkin asked. “Your hands are shaking.”
“What would I do?” asked Pekkala, as much to himself as to Kropotkin. “I can’t just start all over.”
Kropotkin smiled. “Of course you could! People do it all the time. And as for what you would do, there isn’t a police force in the world that would turn down the chance to have you work for them. If you ask me, Pekkala, the people who are running this country don’t deserve the loyalty of a man like you.”
“The people I investigate would be criminals no matter who was in charge of this country.”
Kropotkin stopped. He turned and faced Pekkala, eyes narrowed against the spitting rain. “But what if the people who are running the country are the greatest criminals of all?”
Pekkala heard the aggression in Kropotkin’s voice. From anyone else, it might have come as a surprise. But Kropotkin was in the habit of speaking his mind, with little thought to how his opinions were received, and Pekkala felt glad that there was no one else around. Words like that, in a place like this, could get a man in trouble.
“Ask yourself, Pekkala, how can a man do good when he is surrounded by those who do not?”
“That,” replied Pekkala, “is when good men are needed the most.”
A look of sadness passed across Kropotkin’s face. “So your mind is made up?”
“I am grateful for your offer, Kropotkin, but my answer will have to be no.”
