Rasputin's Revenge (13 page)

“He won’t be admitted here again.”

“It may already be too late. What was that he said just before he left, about damage already done?”

He waved it off. “That’s just his way. There’s no sign he’s done a thing.”

“Which could also be a sign he’s done it rather well, don’t you think?” Lupa didn’t have to mention it aloud. He and I both knew Minsky had died of arsenic poisoning.

Pohl finished a glass of beer and poured himself another. “You mean the murders?” He shook his head. “You don’t understand, Auguste. This is a personal thing between Karel and the Czar and, now that he’s betrayed my trust, between me and him. It has nothing to do with the other murders.”

“How could someone like Borstoi be personally involved with the Czar?” I asked.

Pohl shook his head sadly. “It really has been a tragedy, but for Karel to blame Nicholas personally is an overreaction.”

“What happened?”

“Karel’s father published one of our small evening newspapers. At the beginning of the War, he started printing articles by Communists and other revolutionaries. As the War news got worse, the articles got more and more strident as the censors got more powerful. He was finally told to stop printing.” The chef sighed. “Well, he wouldn’t do it. He said the people needed to know the truth. Finally the secret police came and arrested him, tried him for treason, found him guilty, and shot him.”

The chef appealed to Lupa and me. “I did everything I could, but Karel just won’t believe it. Nicholas was in Spala when his father was arrested. And from arrest to execution took only two days. What else could I have done?”

“Certainly Karel doesn’t think it was your fault?” I asked.

“He thinks I could have somehow gotten through to Nicholas, and I tried. There just wasn’t time. So now he blames both of us, the Czar and myself. Really he blames everyone and everything. He says the system itself is rotten and has to be replaced.”

“Starting with Nicholas,” Lupa said.

“Evidently.” The chef finished another beer. He drank more quickly even than Lupa. “And now he is tempting the same fate as his father, publishing the same paper, directly calling for open revolt.”

“Why haven’t the police stopped him?” I asked.

Pohl laughed bitterly. “That’s the great irony. When Nicholas came back from Spala last time, I told him about the execution and he felt terrible. After looking over some issues of the paper, he decided it wasn’t treasonous.” He put away half of another glass of beer. “There’s an example, Auguste, of what I mean when I say he’s starting to listen to the voice of the people.

“So today Karel is publishing his paper with the Czar’s blessing. And now, in my opinion, the articles are treasonous, much worse than anything his father ever printed. That’s why I asked him to come here tonight—to try and reason with him, ask him to be a little more moderate. Before tonight, at least we’d always been able to talk.” The poor man shook his head. “I had no idea he hated me so much. If he’d succeeded in poisoning Nicholas, who do you think would have been blamed?”

Lupa nodded and laughed thinly. “Now there,” he said, “there is a simple deduction.”

A few minutes later, when the talk had turned again, as it always seemed to, to food, I excused myself, saying that I had to be up early to tutor Alexis. Lupa and Pohl remained, drinking beer and exchanging recipes.

Coming home last night, I wrote a while, then went to bed and slept fitfully for a few hours. This morning I rose groggily and finished my last entry.

Now, save one solitary wagon unloading supplies at the Alexander Palace, Tsarkoye Selo is quiet. The sky, through heavy snow clouds, is beginning to show a hint of light in the east, but the streetlights are still on, their small flames sputtering in the freezing gusts.

I realized that I never told Lupa I would work with him. If he is right about the murders weakening Nicholas’ resolve to fight on, then of course they must be stopped. My original mission and his work toward the same goal, and any help I can give I must offer.

And yet I am filled with foreboding, as though the force of this Russian winter now so lately begun will defeat us all, as it has so many others before us. Perhaps it’s simply fatigue, but I can’t escape the feeling that none of us will live to see another Spring.

7

(
OCTOBER
16, 1916.)

A
fter a busy morning and an early afternoon nap, I am feeling much better. Lupa sent a note in my absence saying that he’d be coming around at six o’clock to make some plans for our investigation. That is still an hour away, and yet night has long since fallen.

I was in St. Petersburg at half past eight this morning. The snow had been swept from the main streets and I took the Nevsky Prospekt up to the Winter Palace, charmed anew by its style and grandeur. The country may be ravaged, the city itself starving, but there is no sign of it on this boulevard. I passed four boulan-geries as I walked and stopped into one for a good croissant. Here the wealthy send their servants to buy bread, and here they come themselves to shop for clothes and imported goods, to have their hair done and, I would presume, to gossip.

Braced by the bite to eat and the sharp morning chill, I felt prepared to meet my young charge. I was ushered upstairs to a book-lined chamber and told by a servant that his Majesty was finishing his breakfast and would be along shortly.

His Majesty! I mulled over the phrase, struck by its irony. And then, noting my surroundings, the Palace itself, the tutors, bodyguards and retinue attached to this boy, I recognized the reality behind the term. There was a majesty inherent in his position, but for a boy, it must be a lonely and daunting one. And was he not, after all, still just a boy?

The door opened. I was lost in my thoughts, and the Heir Apparent was in front of me before I could move. Behind him lurked the menacing
bulk of Derevenko, whose job (I discovered this morning) was to keep Alexis from falling, bumping into things, cutting himself, or in any way getting bruised. It must have been an exhausting and thankless role, but even so, his dour expression surely was overdone.

Alexis, in his own sailor uniform, marched straight up to me and addressed me imperiously: “When the future Czar of Russia enters a room,” he said, “it is customary to stand.”

I stared at him for a long moment. This was clearly a test, and my reaction would determine whether or not we would get along.

I remained seated. “In France,” I said, “a student bows to greet his tutor.”

“We are in Russia.”

“We are studying French.”

He eyed me levelly. If there was any trace of humor in those gray-blue eyes, he hid it well. Suddenly I looked into the space behind him, shouted, “Look out!” and held up my hands as if warding off a blow. “Down! Get down!”

Immediately Alexis dropped to the ground, covering his head with his hands. Derevenko went to one knee, partially covering the boy against the expected attack.

Still in my chair, I said quietly, “Abject prostration isn’t necessary. A simple bow would do.”

If I made an enemy in Derevenko, I made a friend in Alyosha. The prince raised his head, looked around behind him, then up at me. The startled look gave way slowly, but when he’d realized what I had done, he broke into a sheepish grin. Finally he began laughing aloud, and I joined in.

Derevenko glared and muttered, but I barely noticed. Helping the boy to his feet, I extended my hand. “A republican compromise,” I offered. “My name is Jules Giraud. We met the other day.”

He took my hand, a surprisingly firm grip in one so young—he was almost thirteen—and shook it warmly. Derevenko, fuming, got up and dusted himself off. He glared at me with ill-disguised anger.

“It’s all right, Rudi,” Alexis said. “No harm was done.”

“And if harm was done, whose fault would it have been?” the man asked. Then, to me, “Do you want the boy’s death on your hands?”

“Rudi, that’s enough! You can go. We’ll start our lessons now.”

The big sailor’s words seemed muffled through his heavy mustache. “I’ll be just outside.”

When the door closed, Alexis giggled again. “Don’t mind Rudi,” he said, “that’s just how he is. You did take quite a risk, though. How could you know I wouldn’t order you shot?”

I shrugged. “I didn’t. Could you?”

He smiled. “I don’t know, actually. I’ve never ordered anybody shot. I don’t think I’d like it.”

“No, I should imagine that pardoning those who are about to be shot would be more fun.”

“My father does that,” he said proudly, “quite often.”

We’d naturally been speaking in French since he’d come in, and he might have been a young
bien éléve
from Paris. His accent, which he’d probably picked up from his last tutor, the Swiss Pierre Gaillard, was slightly thick, but passable.

“Well,” I said at last, “I must confess I’ve never been a tutor before. Is there some sort of routine we’re supposed to follow? Did you and Monsieur Gaillard leave off somewhere?”

“We usually left off with me sleeping.” He laughed, then sat down, and spoke more seriously. “We were supposed to have conversations. Every day Pierre would come in and say, ‘Today we discuss Molière,’ or ‘
Eh bien
, the migration of salmon is a fascinating topic, don’t you think?’”

“And they didn’t interest you?”

“Occasionally, but for the most part, no. Pierre wasn’t, isn’t, very clever. Even the interesting subjects seemed a little dull. And he would never discuss the most important thing of all. He was afraid, I think.”

“And that was what?”

His young face lit up at the thought. “Politics. The world. My father.”

It was an interesting string of words, I thought. Rubbing my chin, I asked dryly. “Why do I sense a challenge here?”

Pleased, he nodded. “A glove Pierre would not have felt.”

I was beginning to be impressed with the boy’s intelligence and subtlety. “Or perhaps would choose not to.”

“Perhaps, though I think not.” He lowered his voice, and suddenly he seemed years older. “Monsieur Giraud, can you tell me about my father? Do you know what’s happening here?”

I pondered the question. It was most extraordinary that I hadn’t been briefed before coming to this tutoring. And even as that thought occurred to me, I realized that there may have been reason, not oversight, behind it.

Surely the royal couple would have told me to avoid certain topics if they had wanted to keep them from Alexis. That they hadn’t done so argued that I might be a conduit to pass feelings and impressions between
parents and son. And even if such weren’t the case, the opportunity played directly into my own role here.

Interpreting my silence as hesitancy, Alexis solved another problem that had begun to occur to me. “If you are worried about being overheard,” he whispered, “follow me.” He covered his mouth with a finger, then led me back through the study, away from the entrance where, presumably, Derevenko sat sulking.

Opening a door without a sound, we darted unseen across a hallway, closed another door behind us, and moved into a furnished suite, through a sitting room and then what must have been Alyosha’s bedroom. Against the wall of that room was a large closet.

Pulling the door to, Alexis turned on an overhead light, then pushed aside the clothes. There, a ladder led up to a skylight.

Alexis pulled down a heavy coat and put it on. Then, still whispering, he told me to take one for myself. There might have been compelling reasons for this kind of stealth, but it was becoming more and more clear to me that here was simply a boy enjoying a secret getaway from the adults. The fear of actual spying gave the game an added piquancy, but in essence I believed we were doing nothing more than playing hide-and-seek.

In another moment, we had climbed the ladder, pushed open the skylight, which was partially blocked by snow, and were out on a landing on the roof of the Winter Palace. The area, perhaps three meters square, was walled to just above Alyosha’s height on the three sides facing the city. On the last, the roof fell gradually away, though the inner courtyard still couldn’t be seen. And hence, I realized, no one in the courtyard could see up here. It was an ideal hiding place.