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Detlev nodded, his lips pressed tightly together. ‘It is not my intention to try.’

‘Then why throw yourself at their mercy, since you know they will not show you any?’

‘The judgement I await will not be passed by any mortal man.’

‘In the meantime, however, you will simply be thought of as a fool.’

‘A holy fool, perhaps. That does not trouble me.’ Smiling, Detlev held out his hands, palms up and side by side. ‘I’ve told you all you’re going to learn from me, Inspector, so go ahead and put those chains back on.’

‘Very well,’ said Pekkala. ‘You have already told me more than you realise, and it is all I need to know for now.’ With those words, he replaced the handcuffs and headed for the door.

‘It was a pleasure to have met you,’ said the priest, before Pekkala left the room, ‘and I regret that our acquaintance was so brief.’

‘We will meet again, Father Detlev,’ Pekkala answered. ‘I am not finished with you yet.’

‘It sounds as if you are threatening me, Inspector.’

‘I am making you a promise,’ said Pekkala.

Before making his report to the Tsar, as Vassileyev had instructed him, Pekkala paid a visit to the headquarters of the Petrograd Metropolitan Police, to check whether Detlev had a criminal past, but they had no record of the man. Next, Pekkala tried the State Police, the Gendarmerie, but they had nothing on him either. There was only one place left to look – back at the offices of the Tsar’s Secret Police; although Pekkala doubted that he would find anything there. If Detlev had not shown up in the files of the local and national law enforcement, it was unlikely he would have come to the attention of the Okhrana.

In the bustling foyer of Okhrana headquarters, Pekkala asked the clerk at the records office if there was any information on file about Detlev.

‘I’ll take a look, Inspector,’ said the clerk. The man turned smartly on his heel and marched back into his musty-smelling world of filing cabinets and manila envelopes.

While he waited, Pekkala took in the many sounds and smells of the headquarters building, separating each strand like a man unbraiding rope – the gasp of the main door as it opened from the street and the way the brush seal along the bottom edge shushed across the tiled floor of the entranceway; the splashing gurgle of a toilet flushing in the guards’ off-duty room; the voice of Chief Inspector Vassileyev berating some unfortunate agent, his curses suddenly muffled as his secretary rushed to close the door; the smell of hair tonic and stale tobacco smoke as an officer of the Gendarmerie strode past in his dark blue, silver-buttoned uniform, carrying a sheaf of documents: the scowl on his face showed how uncomfortable he felt to be among the secret-loving agents of the Okhrana.

‘I found what you were looking for, Inspector,’ said the clerk, returning to the metal grille window which separated the records office from the main hallway. ‘At least, I thought I had,’ said the clerk.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Pekkala.

The clerk slid the file through the opening beneath the grille.

Even before Pekkala picked up the envelope, he could already tell that it was empty. ‘What happened to the contents?’ he demanded.

Nervously, the clerk sucked at his teeth. ‘They appear to have been misplaced.’

Pekkala let out a long sigh.

‘These things do happen, I’m afraid,’ added the clerk.

‘But the existence of this file does prove that he had a criminal record,’ said Pekkala.

‘That is correct,’ confirmed the clerk. ‘You can tell from the dates on the envelope that the case was opened in June of 1910, five years ago, and closed only one month later. There’s nothing current. Whatever business he had with the Okhrana it was finished a long time ago.’

‘The fact that Detlev is on file here with the Okhrana, but not at the police or Gendarmerie . . .’

‘Would imply,’ said the clerk, finishing Pekkala’s thought, ‘that Detlev’s crime was considered to be a matter of some delicacy. He was no common thief, you can be sure, but whatever brought him to the attention of the Okhrana, it was apparently resolved very quickly.’

‘What he did exactly,’ said Pekkala, ‘and who worked on the case would all have been contained in the report.’

The clerk nodded. He mouthed the word yes, but no sound came out.

‘And you have no idea where it could be?’ asked Pekkala.

The clerk looked back at the labyrinth of filing cabinets, then turned and glanced pitifully at Pekkala. ‘If you have time . . .’

‘No,’ Pekkala told him. ‘The man I work for is not celebrated for his patience.’

Immediately after leaving Okhrana headquarters, he boarded the train for the short trip to Tsarskoye Selo, where he knew that the Tsar would be waiting.

Before making his report to the Tsar, Pekkala rowed out to the island on the Lamskie pond. There, among a heap of ashes, he discovered the remnants of a jewel-studded wooden frame belonging to
The Shepherd
. Unfortunately, it looked as if Father Detlev had been telling the truth.

It was early in the evening when Pekkala entered the Tsar’s study at the Alexander Palace. The moment he entered the room, he knew it would be a difficult meeting. The Tsar was very regular in his habits, from his bland choice of meals (he could eat chicken cutlets and boiled potatoes for days in a row), to the number of cigarettes he smoked (six a day, and always at exactly the same interval), to the way he received visitors in his private office. Pekkala had learned that if the Tsar was sitting down when he entered the room, all would be well. But today the Tsar stood by the window, looking out over the leafy shades of green on the estate, a clear sign that there was trouble brewing in his mind.

In a few words, Pekkala delivered the sad news.

While Pekkala spoke, the Tsar continued to stare out the window. Only when the Inspector had finished did he turn and make his way over to his desk. ‘What’s done is done, Inspector, and I am glad, at least, that you were able to resolve the matter so quickly.’

‘I’m not convinced that it is resolved,’ replied Pekkala. ‘It turns out that Detlev has a prior criminal record. There’s a file on him at Okhrana headquarters.

‘Indeed? And what does it say?’

‘Nothing, Majesty. The file was empty.’

‘Empty,’ repeated the Tsar. Reaching out across the desk, he let his fingertips drift above the neatly organised sheaves of parliamentary reports, those ready for his review and those already annotated with the blue pencils he used for this purpose. The pencils themselves, sharpened into hypodermic points, lay in their silver tray, always within easy reach. The Tsar was a man who liked to keep everything in order; from the strict timetable of his days to his clothing, to his food, to the whereabouts of everything around him, people as well as property. The thought of something going missing, however small, filled him with a deep uneasiness, which he found himself unable to disguise.

‘What I’m trying to tell you, Majesty,’ said Pekkala, ‘is that there’s still more work to be done. This man is nowhere near as mad as he pretends to be. It is simply a mask he has chosen to wear in order to protect others who are responsible, perhaps even more than himself.’

The Tsar cleared his throat. ‘I don’t see it that way, Pekkala.’

‘Majesty?’

‘There’s no evidence of anyone else being involved. You have your crime. You have your criminal. You even have your confession. All that remains is for justice to be served. That you can leave to the courts, and I assure you that he will be in prison for a very long time! Your work is done, and I congratulate you.’

‘And then there is the matter of the man who followed me from Rasputin’s place, and who attacked me in St Christopher’s Way.’

‘Then leave this to the regular police,’ stated the Tsar. ‘Men like us must learn to live with enemies. There will be others, Pekkala. Just be glad that this one did not finish what he started.’

‘I believe it might be connected to the theft of the icon.’ Pekkala tried again to reason with the Tsar.

‘And you have proof of this?’

‘Not yet, but . . .’

‘The case is closed,’ the Tsar announced abruptly, ‘and that is by Imperial Decree. Is there anything else you wish to say, Inspector?’ There was an unaccustomed formality in the Tsar’s voice, as if he were speaking to a stranger, and not a man whom he had trusted with his life for many years.

Knowing that it would be dangerous to argue the point any further, Pekkala bowed his head, took three steps back, turned sharply on his heel and headed for the door.

‘Wait!’ the Tsar called to him.

Pekkala stopped and turned.

The Tsar held up his hands in a gesture of conciliation. ‘Forget about all this,’ he said with a smile. ‘If it helps, I will make that an order.’

Pekkala tried, but he was not accustomed to forgetting.

In the weeks ahead, which spread to months and then to years, the image of
The Shepherd
would shimmer to life in his mind, as if brought back from the cinders of its miniature funeral pyre. Pekkala would see again the brilliance of its colours and the curiously hypnotic shapes which seemed to tell only half of the story contained within that simply painted narrative.

But that was not the only thing which haunted him. Many times, late at night, as Pekkala’s mind swept towards the precipice of sleep, the man in the alley would lunge once more from the shadows. Again and again, Pekkala would fight for his life, dodging and ducking the terrible blade. Once in a while, he survived without a scratch. Other times, he would escape with nothing more than the gash whose pale scar still snaked across his forehead. And sometimes he would feel the plunging sting as the knife sank deep into his flesh. In that parallel life, which at those times would seem more real than any waking thought, Pekkala would lie there in the alley among the empty crates and tufts of blood-soaked packing straw, waiting for his heart to run dry.

There are some things from which a man does not recover. There is no hiding place deep enough inside the catacombs of his brain where he can hide the memories. They will always find their way out, baying like wolves in the black tunnels of his mind until they reach the light again. The only thing that he can do is to let them come, fighting the nightmares until even the demons which brought them grow sick of the carnage.

As much as Pekkala had ever prayed for anything, he prayed for that day to arrive. Until then, however, he lay down to sleep each night with the relentless dread of a man condemned to the gallows.

It was raining. In the muggy darkness of an early summer night, a horse-drawn carriage rattled along the road, wheels splashing through potholes and jostling the four men who sat inside. None of them spoke.

From the distance came a sound of thunder.

With a hooked finger, one of the men moved aside a blind which had been pulled down over the windows and peered through the mud-flecked windows at the devastated landscape beyond.

The driver of the carriage, rain shining on his oilskin coat, whipped the horses onward through the ruins of a village. Not a single house remained intact. Skewed tiles lay like scattered playing cards upon the broken frames of rooftops. Of some buildings, only the chimneys remained; smoke-blackened pillars propping up the clouds.

Rounding a corner, the carriage swayed precariously on its springs and the passengers felt their stomachs lurch. A moment later, they heard the driver calling to his horses and there was a jangling of brass as the carriage slowed to a halt.

The passengers glanced nervously at each other.

One of them drew a pistol and placed it on the seat beside him, covered by the hem of his long coat.

They had arrived at a roadblock, constructed of three military wagons tipped on their sides in such a way that anyone hoping to pass through would have to weave between the obstacles, a task which could only be achieved at a vulnerably slow pace.

A man appeared from the shadows, waving a lantern from side to side. He wore the blue-grey uniform, short-brimmed cap and insignia of an Austro-Hungarian soldier from Landwehr Regiment Number 6, the three stars embroidered on his collar indicating that he carried the rank of Zugführer – a sergeant. On the heavy brass buckle of his belt, the crest of the Habsburg Empire lay almost hidden behind a layer of apple-green paint.

Behind him, from the ruins of a basement which served as their bunker, emerged two more men carrying Steyr-Mannlicher rifles. One of them hurriedly sucked in the last breath of a cigarette, which he held covered in his palm against the rain, before flicking the stub away into the dark.

The sergeant held up the lantern, illuminating the ghostly white face of the driver and, in the soft guttural German of a Viennese, demanded his papers of transit.

The coachman nodded sharply and, reaching into the folds of his rain slicker, pulled out a bundle of documents wrapped in a leather cover. He handed them down to the sergeant.

While the soldier struggled to read through the well-thumbed travel documents, road-use permits and coachman’s licence, its details almost obliterated beneath official military stamps, his two comrades peered in through the carriage windows at the passengers huddled inside. With one callused knuckle, one of the Austrians rapped against the glass.

The window was raised, and a smell of garlic and vinegar wafted out into the rainy night. A moment later, a hand emerged holding an open jar of pickles.

The two soldiers exchanged glances, then looked at their sergeant, who was still struggling to decipher the documents, then each man in turn snatched a pickle from the jar and crammed them into their mouths. With salty juice dripping from their chins, they nodded thanks and stepped back, to show that their inspection of the carriage was complete.

The sergeant, who in fact could barely read and had only made a show of studying the papers, returned them to the coachman and waved him past the barricade.

As the carriage rode on into the night, one of the passengers struck a match and, by its quivering light, glanced at his pocket watch. He was General Yagelsky, a veteran of the recent campaign at Tannenberg. Before the match burned out, Yagelsky took a moment to admire the double-headed eagle of the Romanovs, emblazoned in blue enamel on the solid gold watch-case, which had been presented to its owner by none other than the Tsar himself, in gratitude for his many years of service. But Yagelsky knew that if he had been captured at that dreary roadblock, miles behind enemy lines, any knowledge of his mission, and that of his three colleagues, would have been denied by those same rulers of the Empire who had ordered this journey to be made. The gun he had drawn was not for use against those poor, soaked Austrian soldiers, but for himself and for his fellow passengers; Lutukin and Briulov, both career politicians, as well as Naval Commodore Asikritov of the Tsar’s Pacific Fleet in Vladivostok. He would rather have shot them all than take the risk that, through bribery, torture or despair, the truth behind their plan might be revealed.

As Yagelsky blew out the match and settled back into his seat, his thoughts drifted back to an article he had read recently, by the British writer H. G. Wells, in which the author had said that this conflict was being fought at such terrible cost to human life that it must surely mark the end of warfare. From what the general had seen of it himself – the tens of thousands of unburied corpses rotting in the Masurian swamps and, in the foothills of the Carpathian mountains, many thousands more lying heaped where they fell before the Austrian machine guns – he was inclined to agree.

They had not gone far beyond the ruins of the town when the sky behind them lit up with a series of blinding flashes, which was followed a few seconds later by the whine of incoming artillery.

The shells passed over the wagon and exploded in geysers of poppy-red flame.

The horses skittered in their traces and the driver cracked his whip to urge them on.

The men inside the wagon glanced at each other nervously, as their faces were illuminated by another blast of cannon fire.

Once more, the shells tore past above their heads, with a shrieking, metallic sound like a train with its brakes on full skidding to a stop on the rails. A line of explosions straddled the road, closer now, since the wagon was heading straight towards them.

‘It’s a barrage,’ said Yagelsky. ‘They are preparing to attack.’

‘Who is?’ asked the gaunt and squinting man who sat across from him. This was Lutukin, a serving member of the Russian parliament, known as the Duma. In spite of the fact that Lutukin was a politician, and not a military man, he had brought along a silver-handled sabre, with which he liked to be seen in public.

‘It’s our own side!’ came the answer from Yagelsky. ‘I happen to know that those are the guns of General Tovash’s 3rd Artillery Regiment.’

‘Wasn’t he told about our mission?’ asked Briulov, a nervous, jowly man who had served as Russia’s Minister of Education. Now Commodore Asikritov spoke up. He was a gruff career officer with an impressive moustache and tangled, bushy eyebrows. ‘Of course General Tovash doesn’t know,’ he barked at Briulov. ‘Do you honestly believe they would have told him what we’re doing?’

‘Ask the driver to stop!’ shouted Lutukin. ‘He is taking us straight into the line of fire. We must face the fact that we’ll never make it to the rendezvous, and the German delegation will not wait. If we turn back now, at least we’ll escape with our lives.’ Without waiting for an answer from his colleagues, he took his sabre and banged its silver hilt against the roof of the carriage.

A moment later, they heard the driver call out to his horses. The rhythmic jangle of their hooves slowed and then stopped, just as another shell careened past and exploded close enough for it to rock the carriage on its springs.

The driver jumped down from his seat. A moment later, he appeared at the window.

Startled by the man’s ghoulish face, Lutukin gasped, but he quickly regained his composure. ‘You’ve got to turn back,’ he told the driver. ‘This whole area is about to come under attack. If our own cannon fire doesn’t get us, the Austrian infantry certainly will.’

‘It’s your choice which way we go,’ said the man, ‘but my price is still the same.’

‘Yes, yes!’ Lutukin replied impatiently. ‘Now hurry up and get us out of here!’

The man turned away into the dark and the carriage creaked when he climbed back up into his seat. The air cracked again as he whipped his horses into motion. In order to turn the carriage around, he steered it off the road and they set off across a stubble field, the carriage springs groaning over the uneven ground.

The sound of the shelling receded into the distance as they left the line of fire. Before long, the carriage reached another path. The driver lashed the reins and his horses began to trot. The sound of their hooves clattered reassuringly upon the hard-packed ground.

Now that they were out of danger, Briulov opened up a silver cigarette case and passed it around. The contents were quickly emptied and the carriage was soon filled with the perfumed reek of high-quality Balkan tobacco.

‘It couldn’t be helped,’ said Lutukin.

‘We did our best,’ agreed Briulov.

‘Listen to yourselves!’ Yagelsky barked at the politicians. ‘This is no cause for self-congratulation. Our mission was the last, best hope for peace without surrender.’ He paused to fill his lungs, then exhaled in two jets through his nostrils. The tide of grey rolled back over the window, condensing into droplets on the glass. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘we’re going to lose the last war ever fought.’