Archive 17 (2 page)

As the two men disappeared into Stalin’s office and the door closed quietly behind them, the residue of fear in Poskrebyshev’s brain was still too powerful to let him feel relief. Later, perhaps, that would come. For now, all he experienced was the luxury of drawing in breath, and an overpowering curiosity to know the weather forecast for Archangel.

S
TALIN, SITTING AT HIS DESK
in a leather-backed chair, carefully stuffed his pipe with honey-colored shreds of Balkan tobacco.

There was no chair on the other side of the desk, so Pekkala had to stand while he waited for the man to complete his ritual.

During this time, the only sound in the room was the dry rustle of Stalin’s breathing as he held a match over the pipe bowl and coaxed the tobacco to burn. Once this had been accomplished, he waved the match and dropped the smoldering stick into a brass ashtray. The soft, sweet smell of the tobacco drifted about the room. Finally, Stalin spoke. “I am sending you back to Siberia.”

The words struck Pekkala like a slap in the face. At first, he was too shocked to reply.

“Although not as a prisoner,” continued Stalin. “Not officially. There has been a murder in your old camp. Borodok.”

“With respect, Comrade Stalin, there must be murders in that place every day of the week.”

“This one has caught my attention.” Stalin seemed preoccupied
with the ashtray, moving it from one side of his desk to the other and then back to its original place. “Do you remember Colonel Kolchak?”

“Of course I remember him!”

Stalin’s words threw Pekkala back to a dreary, rain-soaked night in March of 1917, just before the Tsar stepped down from power.

He was woken by the sound of horses passing on the gravel road outside his bedroom window. During his years as Special Investigator for the Tsar, Pekkala had lived in a small cottage on the grounds of the Imperial estate, known as Tsarskoye Selo, on the outskirts of St. Petersburg. Living near the old Pensioners’ Stables, Pekkala was used to the noise of horses moving by, but not at this time of night
.

Peering through the curtains, Pekkala glimpsed a shadowy procession of wagons, three in all, each one weighed down by wooden boxes with rope handles which resembled ammunition crates. He counted twenty-five boxes on each wagon
.

One of these wagons had split a wheel, dumping its cargo. Now soldiers milled about, stacking the heavy boxes at the side of the path. Others were busy trying to remove the wheel so they could rig it with a spare
.

Pekkala opened the door and stepped out into the dark
.

“There you are!” said a voice. “Sorry to have woken you.”

Pekkala turned to see a man wearing a close-tailored uniform and moving with the slightly bowlegged gait of a cavalry officer. His face was fierce and thin and dominated by a rigidly waxed mustache. Pekkala instantly recognized Colonel Kolchak, a man whose social standing in the ranks of Russian nobility, combined with an utter ruthlessness of character, had won him favor with the Tsar
.

Finding Kolchak here, amid all of these boxes, Pekkala suddenly realized what he was looking at. Now that the Revolution had begun, the Tsar’s gold
was being evacuated to a place of safety. The task had been given to Colonel Kolchak, who, in the company of fifty handpicked men, would transport the treasure to Siberia
.

Kolchak’s orders, Pekkala knew, were to follow the route of the Trans-Siberian Railroad and link up with his uncle, Alexander Vassileyevich Kolchak, an admiral in the Tsar’s Pacific Fleet in Vladivostok, who would then take charge of the gold. The admiral was forming an army of anti-Bolshevik forces. Rumors swirled that he planned to declare independence for the whole of Siberia
.

The order to begin transporting the gold should have been given weeks, if not months before, but Pekkala had seen for himself that, in spite of all the warning signs that the Revolution would soon overwhelm them, the Romanovs had chosen to believe such a thing was impossible. Now, Revolutionary Guards were in control of St. Petersburg: It was only a matter of time before they advanced on Tsarskoye Selo
.

“Heading out?” asked Kolchak, as he shook Pekkala’s hand
.

“Soon,” replied Pekkala. “All I have to do is pack my bag.”

“Traveling light,” remarked Kolchak. He was trying to sound jovial, but the anger at this delay penetrated his voice
.

“Not so for you,” replied Pekkala, as he glanced at the wagons
.

“No indeed,” sighed Kolchak. With a sharp command, he sent the two good wagons on ahead, remaining behind to oversee the repair of the third
.

Another hour passed before the broken wheel had finally been replaced. As two soldiers heaved the crates back onto the wagon, one of the rope handles broke. The box slipped from their hands, spilling its contents of gold ingots onto the ground
.

“Damn you!” Kolchak shouted at the soldiers. Then he turned to Pekkala. “I am supposed to bring all this to the other side of the country. How can I possibly accomplish my task if these carts can’t even make it off the grounds of the Imperial estate?”

“You have much work ahead of you,” agreed Pekkala
.

“What you are witnessing,” Kolchak said brusquely, “is final proof that
the world we know is coming to an end. Men like us must now look to our own survival.”

As the last wagon trundled away into the dark, Kolchak climbed back onto his horse. “We must learn to be patient,” he told Pekkala. “One day we shall have our vengeance for what these bastards are about to do with everything we love. This fight isn’t over, Pekkala.”

“A
ND DO YOU REMEMBER
what became of the Kolchak Expedition?” asked Stalin.

“I do,” replied Pekkala. “Almost as soon as the expedition was under way, Kolchak learned that an informant had betrayed him to the Bolsheviks. Guessing that Kolchak would head for the territory held by his uncle, the Bolsheviks sent their own cavalry to intercept the expedition before it reached Siberia. Once Kolchak realized that he was being followed, and since the wagons which transported the gold were slowing down his progress, he decided to leave the gold behind in the city of Kazan as he passed through there on his way to Siberia. The gold was later removed from its hiding place by the anti-Bolshevik forces of the Czechoslovakian Legion, who were also on their way to Vladivostok.”

Stalin nodded. “Go on.”

“In the winter of 1918, Czech Legion troops under the command of General Gaida had joined with the admiral’s White Russian Army. In the spring of 1919, they launched an offensive against the Reds from their base in Siberia.”

“But the offensive stalled out, didn’t it?”

“Yes,” agreed Pekkala, “and by November of that year, the admiral was forced to abandon his capital at Omsk. All through that winter, Czech and White Russian troops retreated east towards Vladivostok. There they hoped to board ships which would take them out of the country. They had captured a number of trains, some of them
specially armored, and were traveling along the Trans-Siberian Railroad. By January of 1920, they were still nowhere near the coast. Seeing that his situation was hopeless, Admiral Kolchak stepped down from power. From then on, he was placed under the protection of the Sixth Czechoslovakian Rifle Regiment, under General Janin. The Czechs became responsible for the safety of the admiral as they continued their journey to Vladivostok.”

“And what happened then?”

“You know what happened, Comrade Stalin. Why are you asking me now?”

Stalin slowly rolled his hand before his face. “Humor me, Pekkala. What happened next?”

“Very well,” sighed Pekkala. “When the Czech train convoy reached the city of Irkutsk, they were stopped by armed members of the Socialist Political Center, who demanded that they hand over Admiral Kolchak in return for being allowed to pass through.”

“And what else did they want, these socialists?”

“Gold,” replied Pekkala. “Specifically, the Imperial Reserves which were still being guarded by the Czechs.”

“And what did they do, these Czechs of the Sixth Rifle Regiment?”

“They handed the gold over, along with Admiral Kolchak.”

“Why?”

“The Socialist Center had mined the tunnels around Lake Baikal. If they decided to blow the tunnels, the Czechs would never have gotten through. Handing over Kolchak and the gold was their only hope of reaching Vladivostok.”

“And what became of Admiral Kolchak, the Ruler of Siberia?”

“On January 30, 1920, the admiral was executed by the Bolsheviks.”

“And what of his nephew, the colonel?”

“Red Cavalry finally caught up with him. After a fight lasting
three days, survivors of the expedition surrendered. Among the men captured was Colonel Kolchak himself.”

By then, in St. Petersburg, on the other side of the country, Pekkala had also been taken prisoner by the Revolutionaries. Both men ended up in the Butyrka prison, although neither was aware of the other’s whereabouts at first.

“And, of course,” remarked Stalin, “you remember what happened at Butyrka?”

“Remember?” spat Pekkala. “Do you think I could ever forget?”

After months of torture and solitary confinement, prison guards frog-marched Pekkala down the spiral stone steps of the old fortress of Butyrka and into the basement. Knowing that these caverns, which had once boasted one of the world’s finest collections of wines, now served as execution chambers for enemies of the state, he fully expected to be murdered there
.

Pekkala felt relieved that his time of suffering was almost over. In something approaching a gesture of compassion, some convicts were even shot before they reached the bottom of the stairs, so as to minimize the terror of their execution. Pekkala found himself hoping that he might merit such a speedy end, but when they reached the bottom of the stairs, the guards brought him to a room already occupied by several men who wore the Gymnastyrka tunics, dark blue trousers and knee-length riding boots of the State Security Troops
.

There was also a third man, a barely human figure cowering naked in the corner. The man’s body was a mass of electrical burns and bruises
.

This man was Colonel Kolchak
.

The sentence was read out by Commissar Dzugashvili, the same man who had been responsible for Pekkala’s weeks of brutal interrogation
.

In the final seconds of his life, Kolchak called out to Pekkala, “Inform His Majesty the Tsar that I told them nothing.”

Before the last word had left his mouth, the NKVD men opened fire. The concussion of the gunfire was stunning in the confined space of the cell
.
When the shooting finally stopped, Dzugashvili stepped forward, stuck the barrel in Kolchak’s right eye and put another bullet into Kolchak’s head
.

I
T WAS
D
ZUGASHVILI
who sat before Pekkala now. Joseph Dzugashvili, who had changed his name to Stalin—Man of Steel—as was the fashion of the early Bolsheviks.

“You know, Pekkala, memory can be deceiving. Even yours.”

“What do you mean?”

Stalin puffed thoughtfully at his pipe. “The man you thought was Colonel Kolchak, the man I
also
thought was Kolchak, turns out to have been an impostor.”

Although Pekkala was surprised to hear this, he knew it did not lie beyond the bounds of possibility. The Tsar himself had half a dozen look-alikes, who took his place at times of danger and who, in some cases, paid for that occupation with their lives. For someone as important to the Tsar as Colonel Kolchak, it did not seem unlikely that a double had been found for him as well.

“What does this have to do with the murder at Borodok?”

“The victim was a man named Isaac Ryabov, a former captain in the Imperial Cavalry and one of the last survivors of the Kolchak Expedition still in captivity at Borodok. Ryabov approached the camp commandant with an offer to reveal the whereabouts of Colonel Kolchak in exchange for being allowed to go free. But somebody got to him first.”

“Ryabov might well have known where Kolchak was hiding twenty years ago, but the colonel could have gone anywhere in the world since that time. Do you honestly think Ryabov’s information was still accurate?”

“It is a possibility which I cannot afford to overlook.” Stalin removed his pipe and laid it in the ashtray on his desk. Then he sat back and touched his fingertips together. “Do you suppose Colonel
Kolchak has ever forgiven the Czechs for handing over his uncle to be executed?”

“I doubt it. From what I knew of Kolchak, forgiveness did not strike me as being one of his virtues. Personally, I think the Czechs had no choice.”

“I agree.” Stalin nodded. “But as far as Colonel Kolchak is concerned, the legion’s job was to protect his uncle as well as the gold. Whether every last one of them died fulfilling that duty would be irrelevant to a man like him.”

“And how do you know what he thinks?”

“I don’t. I am only telling you what I would think if I were Colonel Kolchak. And I am also telling you that when a man like Kolchak gets vengeance on his mind, he will set fire to the world before he can be satisfied.”

“Even if Kolchak can be found,” said Pekkala, “surely he does not pose a threat. He is only one man, after all.”

“I take no comfort in that. One person can still be dangerous. I know, because I am only one man and I am very dangerous. And when I see in another man those qualities which I also recognize within myself, I know that I cannot ignore him. You and I have a strange alliance, Pekkala. In our thinking, we are opposites in almost every way. But the one place where our ideas intersect lies in the struggle for our country to survive. It is the reason you did not die that day in the basement of Butyrka prison. But Kolchak is not like you. And that is why I put him to death—or attempted to, anyway.”