Shadow Pass (31 page)

“He was telling the truth. I know he shouldn’t have written that letter or said anything about your mother’s affair, but people do strange things when they are in love. Believe me, Konstantin—very strange things.”

Konstantin’s voice cracked. “So it wasn’t my father’s fault that he and my mother were splitting up.”

“I’m sure if your father were here,” said Pekkala, “he would tell you they were both to blame.” He rested his hand on Konstantin’s shoulder. “I need you to come with me now.” One glance at Maximov’s car told Pekkala that it wasn’t going anywhere. “We’ll have to travel on foot.”

“Whatever you say, Inspector.” His voice sounded almost relieved.

Pekkala had seen this kind of thing before. For some people, the burden of waiting to be caught was far worse than whatever might happen to them afterwards. He had known men to walk briskly to their deaths, bounding up the gallows steps, impatient to be gone from this earth.

It was a January morning. Ice floes drifted down the Neva River into Petrograd, then drifted out again with the tide, heading for the Baltic Sea
.

In a small motor launch, Pekkala, the Tsar, and his son, the Tsarevich
Alexei, traveled out towards the grim ramparts of the prison island of St. Peter and St. Paul
.

The three of them stood huddled in their coats, while the launch pilot maneuvered around miniature icebergs, twisting like dancers in the current. Alexei wore a military uniform without insignia, as well as a fur cap, exactly matching the clothes of his father
.

They had set out before dawn from Tsarskoye Selo. Now, several hours later, the sun had risen, reflecting pale and milky off the huge stones which made up the outer walls of the prison
.

“I want you to see this,” the Tsar had told Pekkala, after summoning him to his study
.

“What is the nature of the visit, Majesty?”

“You’ll know when we get there,” replied the Tsar
.

As they arrived at the island, the fortress towered above them, its battlements like blunted teeth against the dirty winter sky. Leathery streamers of seaweed clung to the lower walls, and the waves which slapped against the stone looked as thick and black as tar
.

Alexei was lifted from the boat and the three of them walked up the concrete ramp to the main prison door
.

Inside, a guard in a greatcoat which stretched to his ankles escorted them down a series of stone steps to an underground level. Here, frost rimed the walls and the damp chill seeped through their clothing. Pekkala had been here before, but never in winter. It did not seem possible that anyone could survive for long in these conditions. And he knew that in the spring, when the cells flooded knee-deep in water, the dungeons were even worse
.

The only light in this stone corridor was an oil lamp carried by the guard, illuminating small wooden doors built into the walls. The guard’s shadow teetered drunkenly ahead of him
.

The guard led them to one cell and opened the door. Behind the door was a set of bars which formed a second door, so that those on the outside could see who’d been confined inside without any risk of letting them escape
.

When the guard held up the lamp, Pekkala looked through the bars
at a man strangely hunched on the ground. Only his knees and elbows and the tips of his toes touched the floor. His head rested in his hands and he appeared to be asleep
.

Alexei turned to the guard. “Why is he like that?”

“The prisoner is preserving his body heat, Excellency. That is the only way he will not freeze to death.”

“Tell him to get up,” said the Tsar
.

“On your feet!” boomed the guard
.

At first, the man did not move. Only when the guard jangled his keys, ready to burst into the cell and haul the man up, did the prisoner finally stand
.

Pekkala recognized him now, although just barely. It was the killer Grodek, convicted two months previously for leading an attempt on the life of the Tsar. The trial had been swift and held in secret. After the verdict, Grodek, who was barely older than Alexei himself, had disappeared into the catacombs of the Russian prison system. Pekkala assumed that Grodek had simply been executed. Even though he had failed to assassinate the Tsar, to attempt it, or even to speak of it, was a capital offense. In addition, Grodek had managed to kill several Okhrana agents before Pekkala caught up with him on the Potsuleyev Bridge. It was more than enough to consign this young man to oblivion
.

Now only the shape of his face looked familiar to Pekkala. His hair had been shaved off, and scabies sores patched the dome of his scalp. Prison clothing hung in rags from his emaciated body, and his skin bore the gray polished look of filth which was as old as his imprisonment. His sunken eyes, so alert at the trial, stared huge and vacant from their bluish sockets
.

Grodek backed against the wall, shivering uncontrollably, his arms crossed over his chest. To Pekkala, it was hard to believe that this was the same person who had shouted defiantly from the witness stand, cursing the monarchy and everything it stood for
.

“Who’s there?” Grodek asked, squinting at the light of the oil lamp. “What do you want from me?”

“I have brought someone to see you,” said the guard
.

Now the Tsar turned to the guard. “Leave us,” he ordered
.

“Yes, Majesty.” The guard set down the lantern and made his way back along the corridor, touching the walls with his hands to find his way
.

Now that he was no longer blinded by the lantern light, Grodek could see his visitors. “Mother of God,” he whispered
.

The Tsar waited until the sound of the guard’s footsteps had faded away before he spoke to Grodek. “You know me,” he said
.

“I do,” replied Grodek
.

“And my son, Alexei,” said the Tsar, resting his hands on the young man’s shoulders
.

Grodek nodded but said nothing
.

“This man,” the Tsar told Alexei, “is guilty of murder, and of attempted murder. He tried to kill me, but he failed.”

“Yes,” said Grodek. “I failed, but I have set something in motion that will end in your death, and the termination of your way of life.”

“You see!” said the Tsar, raising his voice for the first time. “You see how he is still defiant?”

“Yes, Father,” said Alexei
.

“And what is to be done with him, Alexei? He is your own blood—a distant relative, but family all the same.”

“I don’t know what should happen,” said the boy. Pekkala heard a tremble in his voice
.

“Someday, Alexei,” said the Tsar, “you will have to make decisions about whether men like this live or die.”

Grodek stepped forward to the middle of the cell, where the imprints of his knees and elbows dented the mud beneath his feet. “It may come as a surprise that I have nothing against you or your son,” he said. “My struggle is against what you stand for. You are a symbol of all that is wrong with the world. It is for this reason that I have fought against you.”

“You have also become a symbol,” replied the Tsar, “which I suspect was what you wanted all along. And as for your noble reasons for attempting to shoot me in the back, they are nothing but lies. But I did not
come here to gloat over your current situation. I came here because, in a few moments, my son will decide what is to be done with you.”

Alexei turned to look at his father, as confused and frightened as the young man behind the bars
.

“But I am to be executed,” said Grodek. “The guards tell me that every day.”

“And that may still happen,” replied the Tsar. “If my son decrees it.”

“I don’t want to kill that man,” said Alexei
.

The Tsar patted his son on the shoulder. “You will not kill anyone, Alexei. That is not your task in life.”

“But you are asking me to say if he should die!” protested the boy
.

“Yes,” replied the Tsar
.

Grodek dropped to his knees, his hands resting palms up on the floor. “Excellency.” He addressed the Tsarevich. “You and I are not so different. In another time and place, we might even have been friends. What separates us is only these bars and the things we have seen in this world.”

“Are you innocent?” Alexei asked. “Did you try to kill my father?”

Grodek was silent
.

Water dripped somewhere in the shadows. Pekkala heard waves break against the fortress walls, like thunder in the distance
.

“Yes, I did,” said Grodek
.

“And what would you do now,” asked the Tsarevich, “if I opened this door and let you out?”

“I would go far away from here,” Grodek promised. “You would never hear from me again.”

Already, the damp of this dungeon had worked its way into Pekkala’s skin. Now he shuddered as it coiled around his bones
.

Alexei turned to his father. “Do not execute this man. Keep him here in this cell for the rest of his life.”

“Please, Excellency,” Grodek begged. “I never see the sun. The food they give me is not fit even for a dog. Let me leave! Let me go away. I’ll disappear. I’d rather die than stay any longer in this cell.”

Turning again, Alexei fixed Grodek with a stare. “Then find a way to kill yourself,” he replied. The fear had gone from his eyes
.

The Tsar brought his face close to the bars. “How dare you say you are the same as him. You are nothing like my son. Remember this: Alexei will rule my country when I’m gone, and if you live to see that day, it will be because he is merciful to animals like you.”

Heading back across the water, Pekkala stood beside the Tsar. He breathed greedily, filling his lungs with the cold salt air and chasing the stench of that prison from his lungs
.

“You think me cruel, Pekkala?” The Tsar faced straight ahead, eyes on the shore
.

“I don’t know what to think,” he replied
.

“He needs to learn the burden of command.”

“And why bring me to see it, Majesty?”

“One day he will rely on you, Pekkala, as I am relying on you now. You must know his strengths and weaknesses better than he knows them himself. Above all, his weaknesses.”

“What do you mean, Majesty?”

The Tsar glanced at him and looked away again. A layer of frost had formed where his breath touched the lapels of his coat. “When I was young, my father brought me to that island. He took me to the dungeon and showed me a man who had conspired to murder him. I had to make the same choice as Alexei.”

“And what did you do, Majesty?”

“I shot the man myself.” The Tsar paused. “My son has a gentle heart, Pekkala, and you and I both know that in this world all gentleness is crushed eventually.”

Less than five years later, having been released by Revolutionary Guards from the prison of St. Peter and St. Paul, Grodek caught up with the Romanovs in the town of Ekaterinburg in western Siberia. It was there, in the basement of a house belonging to a merchant named Ipatiev, that Grodek shot the young Tsarevich, and all the other members of his family
.

P
EKKALA AND
K
ONSTANTIN MADE THEIR WAY ALONG THE DARK ROAD
, headed towards the facility.

As they walked, Pekkala tried to fathom what must have been going on in Konstantin’s mind in that moment when he picked up the gun to shoot his father. There were some crimes Pekkala understood. Even the motives for murder made sense to him sometimes. Unchecked fear or greed or jealousy could push anyone to the brink of their own sanity. What happened beyond that point even the murderers themselves could not predict.

Pekkala remembered the last time he had seen his own father—that day on the train as it pulled out of the station. But now the image seemed strangely reversed. He stood not on the train but on the platform, seeing through the eyes of his father. Almost out of sight, he glimpsed the young man he had been, arm raised in farewell as he leaned from the window of the carriage, bound for Petrograd and the ranks of the Tsar’s Finnish Regiment.

Then the train was gone and he found himself alone. Sadness wrapped around his heart as he turned and walked out of the station. In that moment, Pekkala grasped something he had never understood before—that his father must have known they would not meet again. And if, in the end, the old man had not forgiven him for leaving, it was only because there had been nothing to forgive.

As the image stuttered into emptiness, like a reel of film clattering off its spool, Pekkala’s thoughts returned to the present. And he wondered if Nagorski might also have forgiven his son, if he could have found the breath to do so.