Eye of the Red Tsar Read Online Free Page B

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4
     
     
    PEKKALA HELD THE cut-throat razor poised beside his beard-covered cheek, wondering how to begin.
    It used to be that he shaved once a month, but the old razor he had nursed finally snapped in half one day as he stropped it against the inside of his belt. And that was years ago.
    Since then he’d sometimes taken a knife to his hair, sawing it off in clumps while he sat naked in the freezing water of the stream below his cabin. But now, as he stood in the dirty bathroom of the police station, a pair of scissors in one hand and the razor blade in the other, the task before him seemed impossible.
    For almost an hour, he hacked and scraped, gritting his teeth with the pain and rubbing his face with a gritty bar of laundry soap he had been loaned along with the razor. He tried not to breathe in the sharp stench of poorly aimed urine, the smoke of old tobacco sunk into the grout between the pale blue tiles, and the medicinal reek of government-issue toilet paper.
    Slowly, a face Pekkala barely recognized began to appear in the mirror. When at last the beard had all been cut away, blood was streaming from his chin and upper lip and just beneath his ears. He pulled some cobwebs from a dusty corner of the room and packed them into the wounds to stanch the bleeding.
    Emerging from the bathroom, he saw that his old paint-spattered gear had been removed. In its place he found a different set of clothes and was amazed to see that they were the same garments he’d been wearing when he was first arrested. Even these things had been saved. He dressed in the gray collarless shirt, the heavy black moleskin trousers, and a black wool four-pocket vest. Underneath the chair were his heavy ankle-high boots with
portyanki
foot wrappings neatly rolled inside each one.
    Lifting the gun belt over his shoulder, he buckled the strap around his middle. He adjusted it until the butt of the gun rested just beneath the left side of his rib cage so that he could draw the Webley and fire it without breaking the fluidity of motion—a method which had saved his life more than once.
    The last piece of clothing was a close-fitting coat made of the same black wool as the vest. Its flap extended to the left side of his chest, in the manner of a double-breasted jacket, except that it fastened with concealed buttons, so that none showed on the coat when it was worn. The coat extended one hand’s length below his knees and its collar was short, unlike the sprawling lapel of a standard Russian army greatcoat. Finally, Pekkala attached the emerald eye under the collar of his jacket.
    Again he looked at his face in the mirror. Carefully, he touched the rough pads of his fingertips against the windburned skin beneath his eyes, as if unsure of who was looking back at him.
    Then he made his way back to the office. The door was closed. He knocked.
    “Enter!” came the sharp reply.
    With his heels up on the desk, Anton was smoking a cigarette. The ashtray was almost full. Several of the butts were still smoldering. A cloud of blue smoke hung in the room.
    There was no chair except the one in which his brother sat, so Pekkala remained standing.
    “Better,” said Anton, settling his feet back on the floor. “But not much.” He folded his hands and laid them on the desk. “You know who has sent for you.”
    “Comrade Stalin,” said Pekkala.
    Anton nodded.
    “Is it true,” asked Pekkala, “that people call him the Red Tsar?”
    “Not to his face,” Anton answered, “if they want to go on living.”
    “If he is the reason I’m here,” persisted Pekkala, “then let me speak to him.”
    Anton laughed. “You do not ask to speak to Comrade Stalin! You wait until he asks to speak to you, and if that ever happens, you will have your conversation. In the meantime, there is work to be done.”
    “You know what happened to me, back in the Butyrka prison.”
    “Yes.”
    “Stalin is responsible for that. Personally