The policeman did not even notice. He kept his gun aimed at Anton. “Go on,” he said, “I’m going to shoot you either way, so-”

A stunning crash filled the air.

Kirov cried out in shock.

Anton watched in confusion as the drunken policeman dropped to his knees. A white gash showed across his neck, followed instantly by a torrent of blood which poured from the hole in his throat. Slowly and deliberately, the policeman raised a hand to cover the wound. The blood pulsed out between his fingers. His eyes blinked rapidly, as if he was trying to clear his vision. Then he tipped forward into a puddle on the road.

Anton looked across at his brother.

Pekkala lowered the Webley. Smoke still slithered from the cylinder. He slid the gun back into its holster under his coat.

Kirov retrieved his own gun from the mud. He wiped some of the dirt away, then tried to put the pistol back in its holster, but his hands were shaking so much that he gave up. He looked from Anton to Pekkala. “I’m sorry,” he said. Then he walked to the side of the road and threw up in the bushes.

The engine of the Emka was still running. Exhaust smoke puffed from the tailpipe.

“Let’s go.” Anton motioned for them to get back in the car.

“We should file a report,” said Pekkala.

“It never happened,” Anton said. Without looking Pekkala in the eye, he walked past him and got into the car.

“What should we do with the body?” Kirov wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

“Leave it!” shouted Anton.

Kirov climbed behind the wheel.

Pekkala stared at the corpse in the road. The puddle had turned red, like wine spilled out of a bottle. Then he got back in the car.

They drove on.

For a long time, nobody talked.

None of the roads were paved, and they encountered few cars along the way. Often they sped past horses harnessed to carts, leaving them in clouds of yellow dust, or slowed to navigate around places where puddles had merged to form miniature ponds.

In this wide, deserted countryside, they eventually became lost. The rolling hills and valleys all began to look the same. All road markers had been forcibly removed, leaving only the splintered stumps of posts on which the signs had once been nailed. Kirov had a map, but it did not appear to be accurate.

“I don’t even know what direction we are heading in,” sighed Kirov.

“Pull over,” said Pekkala.

Kirov glanced at him in the rearview mirror.

“If you stop the car, I can tell you where we are going.”

“Do you have a compass?”

“Not yet,” replied Pekkala.

Grudgingly, Kirov eased up on the gas. The car rolled to a stop in the middle of the road. He cut the engine.

Silence settled on them like the dust.

Pekkala opened the door and got out.

All around them, wind blew through the tall grass.

Pekkala opened the trunk.

“What is he doing?” demanded Kirov.

“Just leave him alone,” replied Anton.

Pekkala fished out a crowbar from the tangle of fuel containers, towing ropes, and assorted cans of army rations rolling loose around the trunk of the car.

He walked out into the field and jammed the bar into the earth. Its shadow stretched long on the ground. Then, sweeping his fingers through the grass, he pulled a couple of dusty pebbles from the earth. One of these he laid at the end of the shadow. The other one he put inside his pocket. Turning to the men who waited in the car, he said, “Ten minutes.” Then he sat down cross-legged by the crowbar, resting his elbow on his knee and his chin in the palm of his hand.

Both men stared out the window at the figure of Pekkala, his dark shape like some ancient obelisk out in the blankness of that desolate land.

“What’s he doing?” Kirov asked.

“Making a compass.”

“He knows how to do that?”

“Don’t ask me what he knows.”

“I pity him,” said Kirov.

“He does not want your pity,” replied Anton.

“He is the last one of his kind.”

“He is the only one of his kind.”

“What became of all the people he knew before the Revolution?”

“Gone,” replied Anton. “All except one.”

“She is a beauty,” said the Tsar.

Pekkala stood beside him on the veranda of the Great Ballroom, squinting in the sunlight of an early summer afternoon.

Ilya had just led her students through the Catherine Palace. Now the dozen children, holding hands in pairs, made their way across the Chinese Bridge.

Ilya was a tall woman with eyes the blue of old Delft pottery and dirty-blond hair which trailed over the brown velvet collar of her coat.

The Tsar nodded approvingly. “Sunny likes her.” That was what he called his wife, the Tsarina Alexandra. She, in turn, had given him the curious name of “Blue Child,” after a character in a novel they’d both enjoyed by the author Florence Barclay.

Once across the Chinese Bridge, Ilya steered the small but orderly procession towards the Gribok gardens. They were headed for the Chinese Theater, its windows topped with gables like the mustaches of Mongol Emperors.

“How many of these tours does she give?” asked the Tsar.

“One for each class, Excellency. It is the highlight of their year.”

“Did she find you sleeping in a chair again, with your feet up on one of my priceless tables?”

“That was last time.”

“And are you engaged to be married?”

Flustered by the question, Pekkala cleared his throat. “No, Excellency.”

“Why not?”

He felt the blood run to his face. “I have been so busy with the training, Excellency.”

“That may be a reason,” replied the Tsar, “but I would not call it an excuse. Besides, your training will soon be complete. Are you planning to marry her?”

“Well, yes. Eventually.”

“Then you had better get on with it before someone else beats you to the finish line.” The Tsar appeared to be wringing his hands, as if tormented by some memory jostled to the surface of his mind. “Here.” He pressed something into Pekkala’s hand.

“What is this?” asked Pekkala.

“It’s a ring.”

Then Pekkala realized that what the Tsar had been doing was removing the signet ring from his finger. “I can see what it is,” he said, “but why are you handing it to me?”

“It’s a gift, Pekkala, but it is also a warning. This is no time to hesitate. When you are married, you will need a ring to wear. This one, I think, will do nicely. She will need a ring as well, but that part I leave to you.”

“Thank you,” said Pekkala.

“Keep it somewhere safe. There! Look.” He pointed out the window.

Ilya had seen them standing in the window. She waved.

Both men waved back and smiled.

“If you let her get away,” the Tsar said through the clenched teeth of his grin, “you’ll never forgive yourself. And neither will I, by the way.”

ANTON GLANCED AT THE WHITE FACE OF HIS OVERSIZED WRISTWATCH and leaned his head out the window. “Ten minutes!” he shouted.

Pekkala climbed to his feet. The shadow of the crowbar had drifted to the right. He withdrew the second pebble from his pocket and laid it at the end of where the shadow had now reached. Then he dug his heel into the dirt and carved a line between the two pebbles. Positioning himself at the end of the second shadow, he held his arm out straight along the line he had dug in the sand. “That way is to the east,” he said.

Neither man questioned this result, conjured from thin air with skills beyond their reckoning, a thing both strange and absolute.

Having driven all day, stopping only to refuel from one of several gas cans they carried in the trunk, they stopped that night under the roof of an abandoned barn.

They parked the Emka on the dirt floor of the barn, to keep it out of sight in case this place was not as empty as it seemed. Then they lit a fire on the floor, feeding the flames with wooden planks prised out of old horse stalls.