Eye of the Red Tsar by Sam Eastland

good-bye, Cadet Pekkala.”
    “It was not a guess, Excellency. There are twelve buttons on your tunic, including the buttons on your cuffs.”
    The Tsar’s head snapped up. “Good heavens, you are right! And what is on those buttons, Pekkala? What crest did you see?”
    “No crest at all, Excellency. The buttons are plain.”
    “Hah!” The Tsar walked into the stable. “Right again!” he said
.
    Now the two men stood only an arm’s length apart
.
    Pekkala recognized something familiar in the Tsar’s expression—a kind of hardened resignation, buried so deep that it was now as much a permanent part of the man as the color of his eyes. Then Pekkala realized that the Tsar, like himself, was on a path not of his own choosing, but one which he had learned to accept. Looking at the Tsar’s face was like studying his own reflection in some image of the future
.
    The Tsar seemed to grasp this connection. He looked momentarily bewildered, but quickly regained his composure. “And my ring?” he asked. “Did you happen to notice…?”
    “Some kind of long-necked bird. A swan, perhaps.”
    “A crane,” muttered the Tsar. “This ring once belonged to my grandfather, Christian the Ninth of Denmark. The crane was his personal emblem.”
    “Why are you asking me these questions, Excellency?”
    “Because,” replied the Tsar, “I think your destiny is with us, after all.”
     
     
     

7
     
     
    ANTON WAS STARING into the fire. “My brother gave up everything he had, but still he did not give up everything.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?” Kirov snapped.
    “He is rumored to be the last man left alive who knows the location of the Tsar’s secret gold reserves.”
    “That’s not a rumor,” said Pekkala. “That’s a fairy tale.”
    “What gold reserves?” asked Kirov, looking more confused than ever. “I learned in school that all of the Tsar’s property was seized.”
    “Only what they could get their hands on,” said Anton.
    “How much gold are you talking about?” asked Kirov.
    “Nobody seems to know exactly,” Anton replied. “Some people say there are more than ten thousand bars of it.”
    Kirov turned to Pekkala. “And you know where it is?”
    With a look of exasperation, Pekkala rocked back in his chair. “You can believe what you want, but I am telling the truth. I do not know where it is.”
    “Well,” said Kirov, injecting his voice with authority, “I am not here to oversee a search for gold. I am here, Inspector Pekkala, to see that you obey the protocols.”
    “Protocols?”
    “Yes, and if you do not, I have been authorized to use deadly force.”
    “Deadly force,” Pekkala repeated. “And have you ever shot anyone before?”
    “No,” replied Kirov, “but I’ve fired a gun at the range.”
    “And the targets. What were they made of?”
    “I don’t know,” he snapped. “Paper, I suppose.”
    “It’s not as easy when the target is made of flesh and blood.” Pekkala slid the report across the desk towards the Junior Commissar. “Read this report and, afterwards, if you still feel like shooting me”—he reached inside his coat, drew out the Webley revolver, and laid it on the desk in front of Kirov—“you can borrow this for the occasion.”
     
     
    On the Tsar’s orders, Pekkala began work with the Petrograd Regular Police, later switching to the State Police, known as the Gendarmerie, and finishing with the Okhrana at their offices on Fontanka Street
.
    There, he served under Major Vassileyev, a round-faced, jovial man
who had lost both his right arm below the elbow and his left leg below the knee in a bomb attack ten years earlier. Vassileyev did not so much walk as lurch about, constantly on the verge of falling, then righting himself just before he crashed to the floor. The artificial leg caused Vassileyev great pain on the stump of his knee, and he often removed the prosthetic when sitting in his office. Pekkala grew accustomed to the sight of the