The Amber Room.
An uncle in Alexandrapol had once shown him an amber pendant. When rubbed with a cloth, the amber could lift chicken feathers.
His hands twitched again, as though scratching.
Kamo had targeted one man and shot him. He picked his next man, who was loping through the high snow. Before Kamo could shoot, hot sparks struck his face. He growled and dropped to his knees. He loosed his next bullet blind. Seconds; seconds, he knew, until the group could close the distance and shoot him point-blank.
He needed to find cover. Still blinded, he scrambled towards the hanging tree but pellets struck him in the thigh and buttock. He tumbled forward, rolled twice, and lay in the snow with a foamy blood on his lips.
Distantly, a man shouted, ‘For the Tsar!’
Kamo brought his hand to his face. It had been pierced by wood splinters from a ricochet. He scraped them out, rubbed the blood from his eyes, and blinked at the empty sky and the branches that veined through it. He focused first on the birds that had taken flight from the gunfire. Then he saw something he could not understand.
It was a figure leaping with the ease of an acrobat through the trees. The figure crouched and launched upward again and again, using the bounce of the living wood, keeping to the hardier branches near the trunk, passing needle-like through the fir much as the lynx had passed through the forest less than five minutes before.
Kamo blinked away the blood.
He turned to his left, where the body of the woman should have been.
There was nothing but a pit of snow.
Kamo was awoken by a long, icy train of water that choked him and dragged his eyelids open. Hands hooked his armpits and lifted him to his feet. Now, with his weight and the pressure of blood, his soles burned again. He grinned through his pain at the men who held his shoulders. From their countenance, he could tell that they were prepared for the bureaucracy of a prisoner who has died under interrogation.
After blindfolding him, they took him to a chamber whose earthen floor had been sprinkled with sawdust. He was dropped into a wooden chair and tied with leather straps. The seat had been polished by the cold arses of a thousand subversives, criminals, and innocents. It stank worse than the open drain in his cell.
Somebody removed the blindfold.
Dull daytime glowed on a high, dirty window. The case officer was leaning against the far wall. His head almost touched the window, and the effect was to silhouette his face. Kamo shivered on the chair. His feet were tilted to their outer edges.
The case officer pulled back his overcoat and checked his pocket watch. ‘You are being held by the Department for Protecting the Public Security and Order. You were found, disrobed and unconscious, in the Great Summer Palace of the Tsars having gained unlawful entry. You also impersonated a member of the Imperial horse guards. Would you like to tell me why?’
‘No.’
‘Mr Mirsky—’
Kamo strained at his leather straps. ‘Who told you my name?’
The case officer cocked his head, as though listening. ‘So. You wish me to think that we have guessed your name correctly. That only tells me that we haven’t. What is your name, my friend, if not Mirsky?’
‘I am the Tsar, you fool! But you may call me Nicholas—Nicholas the Last!’ Kamo laughed. ‘I demand to be returned to my estate in Poland.’ He assumed a serious expression. ‘There, I will apply myself carnally to the Tsarina.’
The case officer stared at him. He nodded to somebody behind Kamo, who walked around the chair: a short man in overalls. He did not look Kamo in the eye as he pushed Kamo’s legs apart, then tightened the straps so that they could not move.
‘The assistant will now remove your cock. It is a simple procedure, and you need not fear for your life. You just have to keep your legs crossed once the operation is complete. Is that not so, Jablonski?’
The man in overalls said nothing. But he took the bulb of Kamo’s penis between the index finger and thumb of his glove hand, nonchalant as a barber turning a chin for a close shave, and held a knife to its root.
The case officer held up his hand.
‘Only your cock will go, my friend. The rest of your equipment will function normally. Can you imagine a lifetime tormented by a growing desire but no outlet to satisfy it?’
‘No,’ said Kamo, ‘but if you are set on finding out, let us telephone your wife and ask her to describe the sensation.’
The case officer began to roll a cigarette. Midway through the procedure, he flicked his hand at the overalled man, who sheathed his knife and undid the straps around Kamo’s legs. Each leg was held until the straps were tightened once more, in case Kamo wished to kick the man in the face, which indeed he did.
‘So,’ said the case officer. ‘We have each spent many hours in such airless rooms. Let us dispense with the gambits and proceed directly to the endgame. You want, no doubt, to know whether I have the power to save you from Stolypin’s necktie. I do. I have assurance that your sentence will be considered for commutation if you supply suitable answers. You know what this means. We say to the magistrate, well, our friend is no criminal; he is a political. He wanted to avenge, say, the unlawful hanging of a dissident. Let him spend some years in Siberia, thinking hard.’
‘What kind of suitable information?’
‘I don’t care how you gained access to the Summer Palace. I don’t care where you obtained your handsome uniform. I want your identity. I want the identity of the woman who escaped, and the boy she was carrying. I want to know why you risked entry to the Summer Palace in the first place.’
Ah, Saskia, he thought. If only you had let slip the secret of that room. I would love to toss you as a scrap to these jaws.
‘You ask the earth, and I am a humble man with nothing but my beautiful smile.’
The case officer lit his cigarette, drew upon it, and expelled the smoke towards the sunlight. ‘There is such a small chance of your survival. Take it.’
Kamo said, ‘I am resigned to death, my friend. I am absolutely calm in the face of it. Already, there should be grass growing six feet high on my grave. One can’t escape death forever. One must die. But I will try my luck once more and, perhaps, one day, I’ll laugh at my enemies again.’
‘Is that your final word?’
‘You have it,’ said Kamo.
‘Then I must send you to a brutal individual. His name is Draganov and he has never failed to break a man.’
Kamo laughed. ‘Draganov!’ He strained at his straps. ‘Draganov!’ The laughter grew. Spit erupted and his throat convulsed. His snorts came high and low. Kamo howled at the high window and they struck the vault of his skull and his lights were out before the sensation reached that part of him that laughed, that bubbled with delight.
The Cossacks stood in a semicircle with their backs to the forest. They wore skirted coats and fur hats. Each was armed with a rifle, sword, daggers, and pistols. Kamo had dragged himself upright against the hanging tree and was resting his head against his shoulder, as though his injuries were severe. He hoped that his bloody face would aid in the illusion. His right hand was thrust beneath his jacket.