Shadow Pass (19 page)

“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 the army doctor named Lazovert. There were other suspects, including the Grand Duke Dimitri Pavlovitch, but it was the Tsar himself who made clear to the Okhrana 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 caliber 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. “Take that out.”

Confused, Pekkala did as he was told
.

Vassileyev took the gun, opened the chamber, and emptied the large .455-caliber bullets out onto 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 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 advisors were sent home in disgrace.”

“Is that why the investigation has been halted?”

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

Throughout the brief 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 specter of his own fast-approaching doom
.

P
EKKALA WATCHED AS
K
ROPOTKIN CROSSED THE ROAD, DISAPPEARING
in the misty veils of rain.

Then he went back to his 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 envisioned 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 in heading home for the night, so he propped his feet up on the desk, folded his hands across his stomach, and tried to fall asleep.

But he couldn’t.

Instead, he 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, he put on his coat and left the building.

It was a long walk to Kirov’s apartment, 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 aboveground 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 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, Tsaritsyn was Stalingrad. As the locals said in Moscow, everything was different but nothing had really changed.

Pekkala was walking along the edge of Gorky 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 moved.

By the time the man’s feet were on the pavement, 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 on his pasty skin.

To Pekkala, he looked 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—the man was NKVD. It was the way he carried himself, 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 too.”

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 awakened 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.

The driver’s face turned pale. “Our car?”

“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 carburetor 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 sidewalk, 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 Tsar’s Secret Police, the Okhrana, Pekkala would report to Vassileyev. The procedures 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 Vassileyev. “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 injuries that put him behind a desk for the rest of his career
.

“The person who lives without fear,” continued Vassileyev, “does not have long to live. Fear sharpens the senses. Fear can keep you alive. But
learn to hide it, Pekkala. Bury fear deep someplace inside you, so your enemies can’t see it in your eyes.”

W
HEN, AT LAST, HIS BREATHING HAD RETURNED TO NORMAL
, P
EKKALA
left the keys in the glove compartment, got out of the car, and walked across the street to Kirov’s building.

It had been freshly painted a cheerful shade of orange. Large windows, trimmed in white, looked down on the tree-lined avenue.

Pekkala knocked on the door to Kirov’s apartment, then took two steps back and waited.

After a minute, the door opened a crack and Kirov peered from inside. His eyes were squinty and his hair stuck up in tufts. Behind him, on the walls, were dozens of awards and certificates from various Communist youth organizations. Kirov had been collecting these certificates of merit since he was five years old, when he had won a prize for a week of community service in the Young Pioneers. After this, he had gone on to win awards for best orienteering, best science experiment, best tent-pitching. Each certificate bore a hammer and sickle nestled between two sheaves of wheat. Some of the certificates had been ornately hand-lettered. Others were no more than scrawls. But all of them had been framed, and they hung from every vertical surface in his apartment. “What are you doing here?” asked Kirov.

“Good morning to you too,” replied Pekkala. “Get dressed. We have to go.”

“Where?”

Pekkala held up the piece of paper Lysenkova had given him. “To talk to the scientists at the facility. Maybe they can decipher this. There may be a link between the equation and the man who escaped, but we won’t know until we understand what’s written here.”