Angered by Hunyadi’s stupor, Krol stepped forward and fetched the detective a mighty slap across the face. ‘Strip, damn you!’ he bellowed.
Blearily, Hunyadi obeyed.
When at last he stood naked in front of Kroll, the guard turned and marched out of the room. ‘Follow me!’ he commanded.
As Hunyadi left his cell for the first time in months, another guard fell in behind him and he walked between the two men, the almost noiseless shuffle of his bare feet in stark contrast to the crunch of the guards’ hobnailed boots upon the concrete floor.
It was only when they turned a corner and he could see the courtyard dead ahead, that he finally grasped what was happening.
His heart began to thunder, as if it was trying to hammer its way out of his chest.
He could see the gallows now, and on it were three nooses, hanging side by side. Two men, as naked as Hunyadi, stood with the nooses in front of them, hands bound behind their backs. Nobody stood behind the third noose, and Hunyadi understood that it was meant for him.
He did not recognise the men. The paleness of their flesh appeared grotesque.
Why do they need us to be naked? Hunyadi wondered to himself. What final insult is this?
He was halfway across the courtyard now. Little pebbles in the gravel dug into his heels.
He thought of Franziska. He wondered what she was doing now. He had heard stories of people feeling something they described as a kind of snapping shock at the moment when their loved ones passed away, as if some invisible thread were snapping. I wonder if she’ll feel it, thought Hunyadi.
And then suddenly Hunyadi realised that the terror which had haunted him for so many days that he could no longer recall what it felt like to live without it was only the fear of dying and not of death itself.
As soon as he understood that, even the fear of dying lost its grip on him and faded away into the still air of the courtyard.
Krol turned and looked back at Hunyadi, to make sure that the man had not begun to falter. And the guard, who had led so many men to their deaths these past few months, was astonished to see Hunyadi smiling.
‘Stop!’ called a voice.
All three men, the two guards and Hunyadi, came to an abrupt halt. They turned in unison to see a man, wearing the finely tailored uniform of a camp administrator, come tumbling out of the same doorway from which they had only just emerged.
‘What is it?’ demanded Krol.
‘Bring him back,’ said the man.
‘I will not!’ roared Krol. ‘I have my orders!’
‘Your orders have been overruled,’ said the administrator, ‘unless you’d care to take it up with General Rattenhuber in Berlin!’
Krol blinked, as if a bright light was suddenly shining into his face. Grabbing Hunyadi by the arm, he marched the naked man back inside, followed by the second guard, who looked as confused as his prisoner.
As the three men stepped into the shadows of the concrete block house, they heard the heavy clunk of gallows trap doors swinging open.
‘What is happening?’ stammered Hunyadi.
To this, Krol just shook his head in stunned amazement.
‘What’s happening,’ explained the administrator, ‘is that your death has been postponed.’
‘But why?’
‘You have a friend in high places, Hunyadi. Very high places indeed.’
‘Hitler?’ gasped Hunyadi.
The administrator nodded.
‘But he’s the one who put me here!’ shouted Hunyadi. ‘I demand an explanation!’ But even as he spoke, Hunyadi became aware of how difficult it was to make demands of any kind when fat, middle-aged and the only naked man in the room.
The administrator, who had retrieved Hunyadi’s clothes from his cell, now dumped the reeking garments at his feet. ‘Ask him yourself when you see him,’ he said.
‘Pekkala,’ said Stalin, as soon as Major Kirov had left the room, ‘there is something we need to discuss.’
‘Can this not wait?’ asked Pekkala. ‘Every minute that I linger here in Moscow brings Hunyadi one step closer to Lilya.’
‘It concerns Lilya,’ answered Stalin, ‘and her family, as well.’
‘You mean her husband and their child?’
‘Exactly. So you have not forgotten them?’
‘Of course not,’ replied Pekkala. ‘I still remember the photograph you showed me, back when I first agreed to work with you.’
‘Yes.’ Stalin paused to clear his throat in a long, gravelly eruption from his smoke-clogged lungs. ‘Let us talk about that picture.’
When Stalin had sent the young Lieutenant Kirov to retrieve Pekkala from Siberia, it had been with one purpose in mind – to conduct a secret investigation into the death of the Tsar and his family. Although a statement had been issued long ago, confirming the executions in the basement of a house in Ekaterinburg, which had once belonged to a merchant named Ipatiev, Stalin had harboured his own suspicions about the accuracy of the report. He had become fixated on the possibility that one person in particular night have survived – the Tsar’s only son, Alexei, whose frailty, caused by haemophilia, had consumed the royal couple even to the end of their days. It was this very frailty, combined with the young man’s youth and innocence, which led Stalin to believe the executioners might have taken pity upon the boy, and perhaps even on some of the daughters as well. A steady flow of rumours had circulated, not only in Russia but throughout the world, that various members of the Romanov clan, once thought to have been butchered in captivity, might still be alive, after all. Eventually, inevitably, these suspicions loomed so large in Stalin’s mind that he knew he must find out the truth. And even as the thought occurred to him, he realised that there was only one man alive who knew enough about the Romanovs to dig out the truth once and for all. It was the Emerald Eye.
Stalin had kept Pekkala alive for a reason, even if he had not known at the time what that reason might amount to. The execution order had been there on Stalin’s desk and he had been about to sign it when he hesitated. Such a thing had never happened before. Even he did not know what had caused his pen to hover over the page. It was part fear, part admiration, part practicality.
Stalin knew where to find Pekkala. What he did not know was whether the Inspector would agree to join forces with a man who had once been his enemy. It would not be enough to simply order him. In order to tip the balance in his favour, Stalin had made Pekkala an offer – complete the investigation, and then Pekkala could go free.
And he had intended to keep his word, at least in the beginning, but by the time Pekkala’s investigation was completed, Stalin had changed his mind. Not only would Pekkala’s brand of expertise prove useful in running the country, Stalin could not imagine how he’d ever do without it. But he knew that Pekkala could never be forced into such an arrangement. He would have to be persuaded.
In the end, all Stalin needed was a single photograph.
The picture was of Lilya Simonova, sitting at a cafe in Paris, where she had fled at the outset of the Revolution. Pekkala’s plan had been to join her there, but his arrest by Red Guard Militia, at a lonely, snowbound checkpoint on the Russo-Finnish border as he tried to leave the country, had put an end to that.
In the photo, Lilya Simonova was smiling. Sitting beside her was a man, slightly built, with dark hair combed straight back. He wore a jacket and tie and the stub of a cigarette was pinched between his thumb and second finger. He held the cigarette in the Russian manner, with the burning end balanced over his palm as if to catch the falling ash. Like Lilya, the man was also smiling. Both of them were watching something just to the left of the camera. On the other side of the table was a pram, its hood pulled up to shelter the infant from the sun.
Procuring such a photograph had not been difficult. Stalin’s network of informants had charted the whereabouts of almost every Russian emigre in Paris.