Rasputin's Revenge (30 page)

Lupa: I would just like to ask Monsieur Giraud …

Beria: I said step down! Your Excellency …

Zostov: I concur. Guards, take this man to his cell!

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[
KREMLIN FILE NO. JG
0665–4712–4790,
CONT.; PSS ACCESS, CLASSIFIED
]

T
his morning the ink was frozen.

I was awakened, as always, while it was still dark, and fed my bowl of gruel. While I ate it, I capped the bottle holding the ink and sat on it. By the time I finished eating, sitting on my cot wrapped in the threadbare blanket, the ink had begun to thaw.

It was still too dark to write. There was, in fact, nothing else to do but listen to this morning’s execution volleys—nine of them—each preceded by the clear ringing voice of the captain of the firing squad. “
Prigotov’tes’. Gotovy? Ogon!
” And then the shots.

Though it is more bitterly cold than it has been, for the first time in a fortnight, the weather has been clear for two days running. The sky—now as I write—is an almost purple hue. Sound carries wonderfully. I look out toward the Winter Palace and sometimes fancy I can hear voices. Occasionally a floe will crack on the Neva. Sometimes, when it’s very still, one can make out the crunch of footsteps through the crust of the snow.

I find myself entertaining the most morbid thoughts. I know that within a short time, my own body will be riddled with bullets, and I try to imagine where those bullets are right now—in what box, in which room, stuck into which soldier’s cartridge belt.

Sometimes I feel grateful that I am in Russia, with its late mornings. Since the executions are carried out at dawn, I vicariously relish the few extra hours I will be given than if my punishment were to be carried out in my native France.

These are ridiculous thoughts, but they weigh heavily.

Yesterday, possibly because it had stopped snowing, they took us to the yard and I saw Lupa. He’s lost a remarkable amount of weight in such a short time, but his frame is still strong and robust. We spoke a few minutes before the guards separated us.

Much to his surprise, Rasputin has come to the prison more than once to visit him, although Lupa didn’t characterize the visits as social. Evidently, until yesterday’s visit, the monk was content to come and stare at him through the bars, his eyes shining with a manic glare, his expression that of a madman.

Lupa told me that he would stand motionless for as long as an hour, mumbling one word over and over, like a mantra. The word was “
rache
.”

“The German word for revenge?”

Lupa nodded. “Exactly.”

“What could he mean by that?”

Lupa shrugged. “I don’t know. The word played a small part in one of my father’s cases, but I don’t see what connection that could have with Rasputin.”

I didn’t either, and Rasputin’s irrationality was a common enough feature of his personality that I didn’t think the question bore much thought.

In any event, when the monk had come by Lupa’s cell yesterday, the visit had been different. He told Lupa that Czar Nicholas was going to Spala again. Though it was only to be a short visit to military headquarters, it removed the last obstacle to our execution.

“How is that?” I said, my stomach turning over at the news.

“Evidently Alexis, the czarevitch, has prevented our execution to this date by interceding daily with his father. He developed a real attachment to you, it seems, and has been doing all he can to keep us alive.”

“But why, then, doesn’t the Czar simply free us?”

Lupa stamped on the cold ground to keep warm. His hands folded under his arms, his ruddy cheeks puffed out, he saw the guards approaching us and spoke with a grim urgency. “Rasputin says the Czarina will not allow that. She wants the execution carried out. Evidently the monk does, too. And with Nicholas gone, he gloats that there will be nothing to prevent it. And she seems willing to risk the wrath of both her husband and child over it.”

“But why?”

“Obviously, she thinks—she’s been convinced—that we’re guilty and a danger to the Czar’s reign.”

The guard came and separated us. As he was leading Lupa away, I couldn’t resist calling after him, “And when is the Czar going off to Spala?”

“Today,” he said.

That was yesterday.

It is to be tomorrow.

An orthodox priest called at my cell an hour ago. Bearded, thin as a stick, smelling of horse and incense, he was no comfort. We spoke for a moment or two, and he offered to hear my confession. I refused, and not simply because he might have been a government spy hoping for a last-minute admission of my guilt. I have nothing to confess now—perhaps this writing has served that purpose. I am at peace, with myself and with the war-weary world.

After the trial, it took some time for me to reach any kind of peace with Lupa. He had involved me in this affair, and his deceptions to me had hurt me deeply and, more to the point, had helped lead us both to this pass from which there appears to be no hope for escape.

But the cause for which we have fought is greater than my personal concerns. I never for a moment doubted his sincerity, and if his methods were not those I would have adopted, still they had served him well enough in the past that his confidence in them seemed justified. There was always a guiding strategy behind his duplicity, and I have come to believe that the stakes justified the risks he took—even the risk of my own life.

Echoing Kapov, who said that if it would shorten the war by a day he would kill a hundred Minskys, I feel that if our attempt to save the Eastern Front gives France just one more day in which to emerge from this fray victorious, it will have been worth it a hundred times, a thousand times.

And what of Elena?

Of course it’s clear that Lupa, hard pressed to come to some solution—any solution—was wrong about her. I am at a loss to explain his insistence that she was a cold-blooded killer, especially when he could supply no compelling motive for her to act. I can only hope that the shadow of suspicion he thrust her under will not harm her with the court. She has had a hard enough time without having to live down false accusations.

If there were only a way to prosecute Sukhomlinov, but that is a futile wish. His alliance with Dubniev would be enough to guarantee his safety even if he weren’t such a sycophant to Rasputin and Alexandra. I am surprised that Lupa never came to accuse, or really even suspect, him—a sprightly offense against our accuser might have turned the tables at our trials.

And now, in spite of all, the Czar continues to fight. His mild manner must hide an iron will, or perhaps his talks with Alyosha have stiffened his spine. If that is the case, and my own influence had the slightest effect upon it, I must then count my mission a success of sorts.

My hands are shaking. These small justifications are cold comfort as I watch the brittle strip of silver sunlight cross my cell for the last time. Tomorrow at this hour …

They’ve brought in someone to take my cell, an old, skinny, hawk-faced peasant, shuffling and muttering in Russian. The guard informs the man that I am French, and he goes into some sort of fit, snarling at me, retreating to the farthest corner of the cell. It is all great sport to the guard.

“Anyone but a frog,” the boy—for the guard is a young bully—said. “That’s what he requested. Hates you Frenchies.”

He laughed again, kicking at the man on the floor of the cell. “Don’t worry, Giraud. He’s just another old radical going to the wall. Though tonight you’ll have to cast lots for the bed.”

He kicked at the old man again and said to him in Russian, “Tomorrow you get the bed. Isn’t that right, Giraud? Tomorrow your bed is the cold, cold ground.”

His laughter rang through the wing. “‘Course, he won’t be here long either.”

Now I scribble to keep from going mad. My cellmate sits cross-legged, scratching at the floor, alternately cursing at me with exceptional venom, then tiring and singing snatches of gypsy folksongs.

I’ve had my last meal—a half potato soaking in dirty vegetable broth. The moon is coming up. It is very cold. I am afraid. I don’t want to die.

My mind is going. I imagine I hear the old man say my name in perfect French. And again …

  PART  
THREE

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