Now the Tsar turned to Pekkala. “Your horse seems to be bleeding.” He did not raise his voice, but still it seemed to carry through the wide space of the training ring.

“Yes, Excellency.”

“It looks to me as if most of these animals are bleeding.” He looked at the Sergeant. “Why are my horses bleeding?”

“A part of the training, Excellency,” the Sergeant replied breathlessly.

“The horses are already trained,” replied the Tsar.

The Sergeant spoke at the ground, not daring to raise his head. “Training for the recruits, Excellency.”

“But the recruits are not bleeding.” The Tsar ran his hand through his beard. His heavy signet ring stood out like a knuckle made of gold.

“No, Excellency.”

“And what seems to be the trouble with this particular recruit?” asked the Tsar, casting a glance at Pekkala.

“He refuses to jump.”

The Tsar turned to Pekkala. “Is this true? Do you refuse to go over that gate?”

“No, Excellency. I will go over the gate, only not on this horse.”

The Tsar’s eyes opened wider for a moment, then returned to their normal squint. “I’m not sure that’s what your Sergeant had in mind.”

“Excellency, I will not continue to injure this horse in order to prove that I am capable of doing so.”

The Tsar took one long breath, like a man preparing to dive underwater. “Then I regret that you find yourself in a dilemma.” Without another word, the Tsar walked past Pekkala and down the line of horses and riders standing at attention. The only sound was of his footsteps.

When the Tsar’s back was turned, the Sergeant raised his head and looked Pekkala in the eye. It was a stare of pure hatred.

The Tsar continued past the gates, where he paused to study the bloody strands of barbed wire.

When he reached the far end of the ring, he spun on his heel and faced the soldiers again. “This exercise is finished,” he said. Then he stepped back into the shadows and was gone.

As soon as the Tsar was out of sight, the Sergeant snarled at Pekkala, “You know what else is finished? Your life as a member of this Regiment. Now return to the stables, brush down your horse, wipe the saddle, fold the blanket, and get out.”

As Pekkala led his horse away, the Sergeant’s shrill commands to the other cadets echoed across the ring.

He led his horse into the stable. The horse moved willingly into its pen, where Pekkala unbuckled the saddle and removed the reins. He brushed down the animal, seeing its muscles quiver beneath the silky brown coat. He was stepping out to fetch a bucket of water and a cloth for dressing the horse’s injured shins when he saw the silhouette of a man standing at the opposite end of the stable, where it opened out onto the barracks grounds.

It was the Tsar. He had come back. Or maybe he had never left. Pekkala could see nothing of the man beyond an inky outline. It was as if the Tsar had returned to the two-dimensional form in which Pekkala had imagined him before. “That was an expensive gesture,” he said. “Your Sergeant will have you kicked out.”

“Yes, Excellency.”

“If I were in your place, I would also have refused,” said the Tsar. “Unfortunately, it is not my place to argue with the methods of your training. If you had to do it over again, would you take your horse over the gate?”

“No, Excellency.”

“But you would clamber over it yourself.”

“Yes.”

The Tsar cleared his throat. “I look forward to telling that story. What is your name, cadet?”

“Pekkala.”

“Ah, yes. You came here to take your brother’s place in the regiment. I read your file. It was noted that you have an excellent memory.”

“That comes without effort, Excellency. I can take no credit for it.”

“Nevertheless, it was noted. Well, Pekkala, I regret that our acquaintance has been so brief.” He turned to leave. Sunlight winked off the buttons on his tunic. But instead of walking away, the Tsar came full circle, turning back into the stable’s darkness. “Pekkala?”

“Yes, Excellency?”

“How many buttons are on my tunic?”

“The answer is twelve.”

“Twelve. A good guess, but…” The Tsar did not finish his sentence. The silhouette changed as he lowered his head in disappointment. “Well, good-bye, Cadet Pekkala.”

“It was not a guess, Excellency. There are twelve buttons on your tunic, including the buttons on your cuffs.”

The Tsar’s head snapped up. “Good heavens, you are right! And what is on those buttons, Pekkala? What crest did you see?”

“No crest at all, Excellency. The buttons are plain.”

“Hah!” The Tsar walked into the stable. “Right again!” he said.

Now the two men stood only an arm’s length apart.

Pekkala recognized something familiar in the Tsar’s expression-a kind of hardened resignation, buried so deep that it was now as much a permanent part of the man as the color of his eyes. Then Pekkala realized that the Tsar, like himself, was on a path not of his own choosing, but one which he had learned to accept. Looking at the Tsar’s face was like studying his own reflection in some image of the future.

The Tsar seemed to grasp this connection. He looked momentarily bewildered, but quickly regained his composure. “And my ring?” he asked. “Did you happen to notice…?”

“Some kind of long-necked bird. A swan, perhaps.”

“A crane,” muttered the Tsar. “This ring once belonged to my grandfather, Christian the Ninth of Denmark. The crane was his personal emblem.”

“Why are you asking me these questions, Excellency?”

“Because,” replied the Tsar, “I think your destiny is with us, after all.”

ANTON WAS STARING INTO THE FIRE. “MY BROTHER GAVE UP EVERYTHING he had, but still he did not give up everything.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Kirov snapped.

“He is rumored to be the last man left alive who knows the location of the Tsar’s secret gold reserves.”

“That’s not a rumor,” said Pekkala. “That’s a fairy tale.”

“What gold reserves?” asked Kirov, looking more confused than ever. “I learned in school that all of the Tsar’s property was seized.”

“Only what they could get their hands on,” said Anton.

“How much gold are you talking about?” asked Kirov.

“Nobody seems to know exactly,” Anton replied. “Some people say there are more than ten thousand bars of it.”

Kirov turned to Pekkala. “And you know where it is?”

With a look of exasperation, Pekkala rocked back in his chair. “You can believe what you want, but I am telling the truth. I do not know where it is.”

“Well,” said Kirov, injecting his voice with authority, “I am not here to oversee a search for gold. I am here, Inspector Pekkala, to see that you obey the protocols.”

“Protocols?”

“Yes, and if you do not, I have been authorized to use deadly force.”

“Deadly force,” Pekkala repeated. “And have you ever shot anyone before?”

“No,” replied Kirov, “but I’ve fired a gun at the range.”

“And the targets. What were they made of?”

“I don’t know,” he snapped. “Paper, I suppose.”

“It’s not as easy when the target is made of flesh and blood.” Pekkala slid the report across the desk towards the Junior Commissar. “Read this report and, afterwards, if you still feel like shooting me”-he reached inside his coat, drew out the Webley revolver, and laid it on the desk in front of Kirov -“you can borrow this for the occasion.”

On the Tsar’s orders, Pekkala began work with the Petrograd Regular Police, later switching to the State Police, known as the Gendarmerie, and finishing with the Okhrana at their offices on Fontanka Street.

There, he served under Major Vassileyev, a round-faced, jovial man who had lost both his right arm below the elbow and his left leg below the knee in a bomb attack ten years earlier. Vassileyev did not so much walk as lurch about, constantly on the verge of falling, then righting himself just before he crashed to the floor. The artificial leg caused Vassileyev great pain on the stump of his knee, and he often removed the prosthetic when sitting in his office. Pekkala grew accustomed to the sight of the fake limb, dressed in a sock and shoe, propped against the wall along with Vassileyev’s walking stick and umbrella. The Major’s replacement right hand was made of wood with brass hinges, which he adjusted with his left hand before putting it to use, primarily for holding cigarettes. The brand he smoked was called Markov. The cigarettes came in a red and gold box, and Vassileyev kept a whole shelf of them behind his desk.