Rasputin's Revenge (18 page)

My wanderings had taken me again to the river, and I stood mesmerized by the heavy gray water as it flowed through the city out to the sea. The snow fell and the wind whipped white and frozen flecks of foam onto the dirty snow-covered banks.

And I got my answer. As I leaned over a rough stone parapet, from one of the closed up houses behind me I heard what sounded like a hundred children all at once. Turning around, I saw that a school of some kind had released its charges for the day. The young boys and girls spilling from the doorway were like their counterparts everywhere—whistling, playing tag, jostling one another. Four girls, bundled in near-rags, held hands and began skipping away, singing a folk song.

And there, I realized, was Russia’s hope—its children, its songs, its culture, even its bleak winter were its own, not Germany’s to dominate and dictate to. There is still strength here, even in the country’s great suffering. If only the Czar can remember it, I thought, turning my steps back to the Palace.

Lupa sat behind a great desk in a tapestry-shrouded room near his sleeping quarters in the Winter Palace. He hadn’t come in from his own investigations until well after nine o’clock.

In the meanwhile, I had eaten dinner (cold fish again) in my own room and waited, reading Chekhov, until I’d received his summons.

There was a full pitcher of beer on the desk, and three empty glasses lined neatly along its edge. More impressive were the half dozen vases of flowers that bloomed in all colors on the desk, suffusing the room with their aromas.

“How …?” I began.

“I mentioned my love of flowers to Alexandra, and she kindly has provided all I could want. They have been changed daily. Wonderful, aren’t they?”

I couldn’t deny it, but neither could I understand where they’d come from.

He finished his latest beer. “Oh, they arrive twice a week by train from the Crimea. Normally, they are for Tsarkoye Selo, but …” He shrugged.

The critical thought came unbidden, but I could not ignore it. One had to question the Romanovs’ priorities and sensitivity when meat and butter for their people rotted in sidetracked boxcars, while their own personal flowers arrived on schedule twice a week from halfway across a ravaged country.

But Lupa had motioned me to a chair and I could see something was on his mind as well, so I held my tongue.

“I am enraged,” he said quietly. “Can I pour you a beer?”

Another glass appeared from somewhere in the desk, and he slid it over the desk to me. It was very cold and delicious.

“I don’t blame you. Where did you get this?”

His shoulders moved a millimeter. “Alexandra again. It is Pohl’s beer. She’s had a cask sent down from Tsarkoye Selo.”

In spite of myself, I laughed. “You don’t do without, do you?”

“To what point?” He drank again, dismissing that subject and moving on to our real topic. “Then you know.”

“Katrina?”

He nodded. “Women, Jules. I’ve said before that they are of two types—foolish or dangerous. I think our Madame Sukhomlinov may be both.”

I reported on my talk with Borstoi, mentioning his opinion that Minsky’s murder had nothing to do with a plot to weaken the Czar. Then I added, “Borstoi thinks your friend Pohl killed Minsky.”

“Katrina thinks her husband did. Did Borstoi tell you that he was the second lover of hers to be killed?”

“The second?”

Lupa nodded, seemed to consider something, then went back to his beer, finishing it in a gulp. He immediately reached for the pitcher, took a fresh glass, moved the empty one into the line along the edge of the desk, and poured. “At least the second,” he said. “The woman’s taste is apparently”—he paused, searching for the word—“catholic. Her husband, Minsky, Pohl, half of the rest of the cabinet. My God, Jules, is it possible this entire affair is over that woman’s favors?”

“I considered that all afternoon,” I said. “The possibility of coincidence gets a little remote, don’t you think?”

He drummed his fingers on the desk. “She received me in a peignoir. Did she think I wanted …?” He shook his head.

The thought amused me, and I sipped my beer to cover my smile. “Did you know about her and Pohl before? Borstoi had nothing good to say about him.”

Lupa glared at me witheringly “Consider the source.”

“Yes, but even so, what he said made a great deal of sense.”

He lapsed into silence, drummed his fingers more. “The woman didn’t mention Max by name. As a matter of fact, she didn’t even hint at any suspicion of him. Her main concerns were her husband and Minsky.”

“Would the General have killed him?”

Lupa shook his head. “One fact argues strongly against it, and that is this: Minsky was not her only current lover.”

“Maybe Sukhomlinov doesn’t know about the others.”

“I get the impression the former War Minister knows about everything.”

I thought about my first meeting with the man, his comment that “one knows everything, I’m afraid.” I tried to recall if there had been an undertone of real sadness in that statement, as though he knew of his wife’s indiscretions. It had been nothing, I was sure, but a world-weary ex-diplomat’s lament, and I told Lupa as much.

“So where does that leave us?” my friend asked.

“Well, Borstoi did say he was sure that one murder was political.”

“Did he say why?”

I told Lupa that he demanded more proof of my sincerity, and then went on to describe my lunch at Cubat, the fire, and so on. When I’d finished, he merely shook his head and drank more beer, as though I’d confirmed something he’d already decided.

A hidden clock chimed somewhere, and seconds later we heard the churchbells throughout the city echoing the refrain. I looked at my watch. It was ten o’clock.

“What should we do next?” I asked. “If the motive for these killings is possession of Katrina Sukhomlinov, I may as well make my proposal to Nicholas and prepare to go home.”

Lupa stared at a spot behind me for so long that I turned to see if something were there. He closed his eyes and pursed his mouth in the manner I’d come to recognize as a sign that he was deep in thought.

“No,” he said at last, as if to himself. “No, I can’t accept it.” He sat up straighter, finishing yet another glass of beer, and pushing it to the line at the edge of his desk. Surprisingly, he did not immediately pour another. “Just because we have a possible second motive does not necessarily eliminate the first. As you say, the odds of coincidence become remote, but in fact, given Katrina’s promiscuity, they are not all that remote.” Now he poured another beer, finishing the pitcher.

“Women, Jules,” he said simply after he’d gone through his usual ritual of watching the foam settle and taking his first sip. My father was right having nothing to do with them.”

I crossed my legs, relaxing. It appeared our business for the night was over. “Your presence here indicates he had something to do with at least one of them.”

He sighed, closing his eyes. “Yes, my mother.” His brow clouded.

“We needn’t …” I began, but he stopped me.

“No, that’s all right. A painful memory, that’s all.”

“Your home wasn’t happy?”

He snorted quietly. “Home? I had no home, Jules.”

I sat back in my chair. Lupa had rarely offered even a glimpse of his personal life or history to me before.

“My father and mother …” He stopped, sighed, went on. “My parents were both famous. Their careers kept them apart, and neither career was conducive to raising a child. Mostly I traveled with my mother—do you remember the Opera star Irene Adler?”

“She was your mother?” I was shocked. Irene Adler had been a world-renowned contralto in the eighties and nineties. Almost as famous as her singing had been the scandal of her involvement with the King of Bohemia. Looking at Lupa, I wondered if he were perhaps an illegitimate prince.

“Yes, she was my mother. She deserted me when I was eight.”

I tried to remember, and recalled that Irene Adler had died in a train accident around the turn of the century. I mentioned this to my friend.

“Yes, I survived that wreck.”

His choice of words went a long way toward explaining Lupa’s antipathy toward women. If he considered his mother’s death a “desertion,” there was much the young man hadn’t resolved.

“And your father?”

He sighed. “The pattern had already been set. I traveled with my mother. By the time I was two, they’d separated. To this day, I don’t know if they were ever married. After my mother”—he paused, began again—“after the accident, I couldn’t very well move in with him, though of course I visited him. In fact, I spent many summers with him. Scotland, France, Norway. England, he said, was too dangerous for me. So I was raised by a succession of ‘aunts’ and ‘uncles’ all over the Continent.”

“And you never saw your father except on these vacations?”

He waved a hand. “Don’t get me wrong, Jules, I learned a lot from my father. He is a brilliant man, very analytical. But a child wouldn’t have fit into his life.”

In spite of Lupa’s protestations of understanding, I could sense the bitterness underlying his words. “In fact I know most about my father
from reading about him. I frankly believe that I was merely a responsibility for him, little else.”

“And now?”

He shrugged sadly, draining his beer. “Now it doesn’t seem to matter anymore.”

Though it was clear to me it did.

“We’ve gotten out of touch since the War. I suppose he is happily raising bees in Sussex, perhaps dabbling in some monographs now and then. I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter.”

I had to ask. “Then he is not the King of Bohemia?”

Lupa actually laughed. “Ah, the well-known scandal. No, Jules, he is not the King of Bohemia, though he is probably better known.”

Another chime sounded in the still room, and suddenly the spell was broken. Lupa looked around as though unaware of where he had been, then laughed rather too loudly, as if to cover his embarrassment. He clapped his hands together.

“Well,” he said. “Enough of that. How did we get on that topic? Tomorrow we see if we can make some real progress.”

He stood up, signaling the end of our interview. “I think I’ll have to speak to Max. By the way, Sukhomlinov may have a private stockpile of weapons. His wife hinted as much. I’ll have to see him. Have you made another appointment with the Czar? He is coming into town tomorrow, you know.”

I’d never heard Lupa rattle so aimlessly. Obviously, the memories of his childhood had stirred up emotions which were still difficult for him to understand or control. I held my hand up to stop him.

“Why don’t we get some sleep, my friend? It is late.”

He stopped, nodded, sat down, more vulnerable than I had ever seen him.

“It’s all right that it matters,” I said. “About your father, I mean.”

He looked at me, his expression blank. Then, in a hoarse whisper: “You know, we have even worked together. He helped me in Valence, the last time I worked with you. But none of it is personal. He has never cared about me.”

“I’m sure he does,” I said, aware of how weak it sounded. In truth, I wasn’t sure of anything. “It will look better in the morning.”

He remained seated, and I said good night. I had just gotten to the door when he stopped me. “Jules!”

I turned. “Thank you.”

With a lump in my throat, I nodded and walked into the hallway, closing the door behind me.

11

L
upa’s discussion of his background made me think of my own home, my wife Tania and daughter Michelle. In my room, I took the last letter Tania had written, which I’d received before I had even left France, and began to read the elegant script. It was full of the domestic trifles that made up our pleasant life in Valence. Michelle’s teeth had started to come in (when I see her again, there will be a mouthful of them!), our own vendange had started (for next year’s vin de table—and now the pressed juice was halfway to nouveau beaujolais), Tania had cut her hair. What’ were they both doing now? And how soon would it be until I could be with them again?

I poured myself a tumbler of vodka, not quite remembering how the bottle had come to be in my room. Taking my pen up, I resolved to write a note to Tania. But no sooner had I sat than I became suddenly drowsy—the images of Tania and Elena Ripley began crowding one another in my thoughts. A few desultory lines appeared on the page. I tried to remember Tania’s face, but could only see Elena’s profile in the reddish light of the alcove in the Winter Palace. Now, as I wrote, was she under the same roof as me?