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Pekkala stood on the train tracks, hands in the pockets of his coat. A breeze rustled the coin-shaped leaves of the poplars that grew beside the tracks, keeping the blackfly temporarily at bay. He smelled the sun-heated creosote of the heavy wooden sleepers, laid out like the rungs of a ladder beneath the shining steel of the rails.

At two o’clock that morning, Pekkala had been wakened at his cottage near the stables on the Tsarskoye Estate. The visitor, a member of the Tsar’s Household Guard, was a humourless Cossack named Ostrogorsky, whose long moustache and drooping, bloodhound eyes gave him a permanently melancholy expression. He handed over a telegram, from which Pekkala learned that his presence had been requested by the Tsar.

He knew at once that this was not to be a short drive across the Estate. These days, the Tsar was seldom to be found among the comforts of Petrograd, renamed after St Petersburg was found to be too Germanic for wartime Russian tastes. Instead, he had moved to the remote settlement of Mogilev, home of Russian Army Headquarters, known as STAVKA.

In an attempt to rally the country’s flagging support for the war, the Tsar had taken over direct control of the military, replacing his uncle, the bearded and imposing Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, who stood almost seven foot tall, so dwarfing the five-foot-six-inch Tsar that, on those rare occasions when they were photographed together, the Grand Duke was stooped almost double, so as to speak face to face with his nephew.

Assuming control of Russia’s war effort was a noble gesture for the Tsar, but one whose futility had immediately become apparent. The early victories of 1914, which halted German advances at Tannenberg, albeit with extraordinary losses, had been quickly overshadowed by defeats on a once unimaginable scale. By the end of that year, Russia had lost over a million troops. The entire Russian Second Army had surrendered. In addition, Lithuania, Latvia and parts of Poland previously under Russian control had all been lost.

By the time the Tsar took charge, three-quarters of a million soldiers had already deserted and Russian officers in the front line stood an 85 per cent chance of being killed. In some areas, their life expectancy was less than four days. In fighting south of the Masurian Lakes, German Spandau crews had been seen leaving their trenches in order to push aside Russian bodies which had fallen so thickly before the German barbed wire that they obscured the gunners’ field of fire.

Against such overwhelming portents of defeat, there was little the Tsar could do to stem the tide.

‘You have five minutes to get ready,’ said Ostrogorsky. Then he turned on his heel and walked back to his car, whose engine puttered quietly on the gravel path that ran by Pekkala’s house.

Quite apart from the midnight summons, Pekkala knew that something very unusual must be taking place. Neither the driver, nor the car, a Serex Landau normally reserved for use by the wardens on the Tsarskoye Selo estate, were what the Tsar would normally have sent to collect him.

In the past, Ostrogorsky had patrolled the estate of Tsarskoye Selo, on the back of his Kabardin horse, riding in a particular jerky, short-gaited style which would have shaken loose the spine of anyone besides a Cossack. Then, one day, having spotted an intruder on the grounds, Ostrogorsky drew his
shashka
sword, with its long, gently curved blade and a pommel which hooked at the end, like the beak of a large hunting bird, and gave chase to the trespasser, who appeared to be making off with a ladder. As he closed in on the thief, Ostrogorsky raised the fearsome weapon and gave a terrible shout as he prepared to hew down the intruder.

Only now did the stranger understand that he was being pursued. He turned, dropped the ladder and screamed.

At that instant, Ostrogorsky realised it was not a thief at all, but rather the twelve-year-old son of the gardener, Stefanov, who had spent the morning cleaning windows at the Catherine Palace.

Ostrogorsky reined in his horse so sharply that the animal reared up on its hind legs and fell backwards. The Cossack, unable to extricate himself from the stirrups, went down beneath the horse. The blade of the sword passed through the animal’s ribs and reappeared above its left shoulder, slicing through the Kabardin’s heart and killing it instantly. Ostrogorsky’s hip was fractured by the weight of the horse falling on top of him and the doctors determined that he would never be able to ride again. Having learned the news, Ostrogorsky decided to hang himself.

He was standing on a chair in his hospital room with a bed sheet twisted about his neck and attached to the beam of a ceiling above his head when the Tsar himself appeared, having stopped by to check on Ostrogorsky’s progress.

Both men were so surprised that, at first, neither of them could speak.

It was Ostrogorsky who found his tongue first. ‘I am a Cossack,’ he announced defiantly, ‘and I will not walk through life like some ordinary man.’

‘You know,’ said the Tsar, ‘I have been looking for a driver.’

‘I am no wagon slave!’ blurted Ostrogorsky. ‘No horse and cart for me.’

‘I meant the driver of an automobile,’ explained the Tsar.

Ostrogorsky mouthed the word ‘automobile’. He struggled to imagine himself behind the wheel of a machine. For a moment, his life hung in the balance as he contemplated such an occupation, and whether it was dignified enough to justify a change of plan.

‘Well,’ asked the Tsar, ‘what do you say?’

‘I say,’ replied Ostrogorsky, his hands rising to the makeshift noose around his neck, ‘please get me down from here before I hang my stupid self!’

Ostrogorsky’s reputation as a chauffeur, namely that he operated his car with the same merciless disregard for human comfort that he had shown when riding his horse, ensured that he was a driver of last resort, although his propensity for silence guaranteed discretion. And the Serex was a car which almost never left the grounds of the estate, which meant that it would not be recognised as belonging to the Tsar’s stable of vehicles.

Whatever the Tsar wants from me, thought Pekkala, he means to keep it secret.

They drove all night, arriving at the outskirts of the Malevinsk Forest just before dawn. Here, they turned off the main highway. In spite of its name, this was still only a dirt track, heavily rutted by the passing of military wagons, whose steel-rimmed wooden wheels had scored the earth to ribbons. They found themselves upon a nameless, muddy path barely wide enough to fit the car. After getting bogged down twice, Ostrogorsky turned to Pekkala, who sat patiently in the back seat, awaiting the inevitable conclusion.

‘You will have to continue on foot,’ said Ostrogorsky, his long dark moustache twitching as he spoke.

‘Where to?’ asked Pekkala.

‘To the railroad tracks,’ Ostrogorsky gestured vaguely down the road. ‘And there you are to wait.’

‘For what? For how long?’

The Cossack stared at him blankly.

Knowing it was useless to question him any further, Pekkala climbed out and buttoned his coat. He wondered how far he had to go. The Cossack’s breezy flip of the hand had seemed to indicate that he had no more idea than Pekkala.

By keeping to the edge of the path, Pekkala managed to avoid the worst of the mud and, as long as he kept moving, the blackfly did not swarm.

For the next hour, Pekkala saw neither people nor houses. There was only the green labyrinth of the forest, and the sound of unfamiliar birdcalls echoing among the trees.

Finally, he arrived at the tracks. He hoped there might be someone there to meet him, but no such luck. Now that he had stopped, the sweat began to cool upon his back and insects spun in crazy pirouettes about his head. The time was fast approaching when the blackfly would rise in their millions for their annual feast upon every warm-blooded creature in their reach. These blackfly were not much bigger than the head of a pin, but each one that found its way behind an ear or down the collar of a shirt or underneath the band of a wristwatch left a tiny red dot of blood from the microscopic toll of flesh torn from their victims’ hides. Pekkala recalled times from his childhood when his father had returned home after a day of foraging in the woods with trails of blood streaming down his face, as if a crown of thorns had been jammed on to his head.

It was almost noon. The sun beat down squarely on the tracks, raising phantoms of heat haze from the iron. Pekkala retreated among the shadows of the forest, where he sat on a fallen birch trunk, picking at the hard black scab of a chaga mushroom which had sprouted from the dying tree. He let the crumbs fall into his pocket. Later, he would use them to make tea. On his way to the tracks, he had eaten some asparagus that he found growing by the path, as well as some fiddlehead ferns and wild strawberries, the largest of them no bigger than the last joint of his little finger. In amongst the trees, he had found a shallow puddle, lined with old pine needles. Skimming his palm across the surface, he scooped up several handfuls, tasting the bitterness of tannins in the corners of his mouth.

Pekkala was just beginning to wonder if he might be the victim of some elaborate practical joke when a faint, metallic ringing reached his ears. He waited. The sound came again, as if one of the rails had been struck with a tuning fork. Leaving his place in the shadows, Pekkala walked out on to the tracks. Shielding his eyes, he looked to the north and then to the south and it was then that he spotted a light in the distance. It was indistinct at first, and shifted in the heat haze as if it were a ball of fire rolling unevenly down the skittle alley of the railroad. Slowly, the train began to take shape. Where his foot rested on the track, he felt the vibration of its thundering approach.

As the huge machine drew close Pekkala recognised the Imperial Train, the deep green paint of its engine piped with gold and red. The train, ten carriages long, came to a shuddering halt beside Pekkala. A door opened and a man leaned out.

It was the Tsar. He grinned and beckoned to Pekkala.

Pekkala climbed up into the carriage and found himself in a richly decorated space. The walls were upholstered with quilted green silk from which electric lights leaned out, their opaque glass shades as delicate as jellyfish. Carpeting, woven with elaborate red and gold floral designs, covered the floor. Thick velvet curtains had been drawn over the windows. There were no seats as in an ordinary train. Instead, there were chairs and round tables and Pekkala wondered what would happen to anyone sitting in them if the train were ever in an accident, as had happened at Borki Station, near Kharkov, back in October 1888.

‘Majesty, why have you sent for me?’ asked Pekkala. ‘And why are we meeting here?’

The Tsar did not answer directly. He sat down and gestured to a seat on the other side of the small table. ‘Make yourself comfortable,’ he said.

Pekkala settled himself cautiously into one of the thin-legged chairs, as if uncertain it would hold him. He had an instinctive mistrust of the fussy trappings that so beguiled the Romanovs.

On the table beside the Tsar lay a letter with a Petrograd postmark. From the even spacing of the letters and the carefully formed Russian of someone who was neither a native speaker, nor a writer of the language, Pekkala recognised the handwriting of the Tsarina.

The Tsar’s hand rested on the letter, as if he expected a gust of wind to blow it out through the window. Unconsciously, his fingers drummed upon the envelope.

From this slight and barely conscious gesture, Pekkala realised that, no matter how much the Tsar loved his wife, he was hesitant to read what she had written.

‘Pekkala,’ the Tsar began. But before another word could leave his mouth, a steward arrived, bearing a tray of the Tsar’s favourite oolong tea, and the Tsar’s mouth snapped shut like a trap.

The steward, wearing a short, silver-buttoned black tunic over a collarless white shirt, looked neither at Pekkala, nor at the Tsar as he set before them two glasses in ornate brass holders. Wisps of steam curved sensually from the surface of the black, smoky-tasting tea.

Nobody spoke.

The only sound was of the patient stamping of the steam engine.

The Tsar waited until the steward had left the carriage. Then he leaned forward, resting his hands upon his knees and fixed Pekkala with his pale blue eyes. ‘How much do you know about icons?’ he asked.

‘Enough to know one when I see one,’ replied Pekkala. ‘Beyond that . . .’ he let his words trail off.

‘I am thinking of one icon in particular,’ continued the Tsar. ‘It is called
The Shepherd
.’

‘That one I do know,’ said Pekkala. ‘It was on display in the Hall of St George the day you declared war on Germany.’

The Tsar nodded. ‘And it was there with good reason, Pekkala. For the faithful of this country, that icon represents the surest guarantee that God is on our side.’

‘What does this have to do with me?’ replied Pekkala.

The Tsar smiled at Pekkala’s impatience. ‘Normally, I would have said that it has very little to do with a heathen like yourself.’

‘I am not without faith, Majesty.’

‘But yours and mine are not the same, Pekkala. What spirits guide you live out there,’ he gestured at the wilderness that lay beyond the cushioned walls, ‘and their names are hidden from all but the savages who gave them life.’

‘Savages?’ He thought about his mother, a Sami from the tundra of northern Finland, and the parallel worlds she inhabited, shifting from one to the other like the steam which drifted off their tea.

‘Yes,’ replied the Tsar, ‘and I mean it as a compliment. It is why I have chosen you for this particular task, Pekkala. You are not bound by the same attachments as we who must struggle with the trappings of our Orthodox religion. The very thing that separates us is the basis for my trust in you. You may not care for this icon, Pekkala, but to millions of Russians, its safety is as important as the safety of Russia itself.’