Rasputin's Revenge (31 page)

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I
thought the risk was too great, even for Sherlock Holmes.

After all, no one had ever before successfully escaped from the Fortress Ss. Peter and Paul. Holmes and I had discussed the alternatives from Sussex Downs to the Astoria here in St. Petersburg, and finally, Holmes saw no other solution. As dangerous as it might be, he had no choice.

His brother, Mycroft, as head of Britain’s secret service, had been following the exploits of Holmes’ son, who is using the name Auguste Lupa,
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and upon his arrest for subversion had alerted my friend. We wasted no time, although the voyage here by ship seemed interminable. Holmes paced the deck in all weathers, terrified that he was already too late, that his son had gone to his execution.

“I must think, Watson,” he said to my remonstrances. “I must have plans within plans. There will, at best, be only a little time, and I must not waste a second.”

By the time we were in Russian waters, he’d decided upon his disguise as the Norwegian violinist Sigerson that he’d used after his disappearance following his duel to the death with Professor Moriarty at Reichenbach
Falls. Sigerson, he reasoned, could play a convincing radical, and could probably get himself arrested. I thought there were extremely long odds against his success, and told him so.

“You’re probably right, my friend, but what other choice have we?”

And against that argument, I was mute.

After first determining that we were not too late, that Auguste was still alive, we made calls on people who Holmes thought might be able to bring some influence to bear. None of them were heartening, and Holmes began laying the groundwork for his own arrest.

Each day, disguised as Sigerson, he would leave our hotel for some underground meeting or another. On the fourth day, Holmes rushed into my room, his eyes flashing. I could hardly recognize this dirty, ragtag musician as my friend. With matted hair peeking out from a misshapen cap, a charcoal stubble, and ill-fitting, filthy worker’s clothes, Sherlock Holmes could be no one’s idea of a cultivated Englishman.

Ignoring my startled exclamation, he asked me if I could be ready to join him downstairs within minutes. Since I’d been reading and watching the snow fall for the better part of the afternoon, I assured him that that would be no problem.

Within a quarter of an hour, two perfectly proper British businessmen were sitting in the lobby of the Astoria in the early, though already dark, evening. Holmes, in his three-piece gray herringbone, his conservative cravat, cane, and bowler, looked particularly distinguished as he sipped his whisky and soda. It was an effective transformation.

On the street, hansoms and sleighs came and went, depositing hotel guests and visitors at the wide swinging doors. Suddenly Holmes raised the newspaper he’d been holding up to his face.

“Ah, Watson,” he said, “I’d thought as much.”

“What’s that, Holmes?” I saw nothing beyond the usual predinner crowd.

“There! Just coming through the doors now. The delivery man and the porter.”

There was nothing provocative about two such people in a hotel lobby, and I mentioned that fact to Holmes. “And you might put the paper down, Holmes,” I added with some asperity. “I prefer to see the face of the person I’m speaking to.”

Chuckling good-naturedly, Holmes complied. “You’re right, my friend. The disguise either works or it doesn’t.”

The delivery man, holding a package of some kind, looked lost indeed. Walking halfway across the lobby, he stopped almost directly in front of us and perused the room. Finally, he went over to the porter as though
asking for directions, and the two of them split up and left the lobby by different exits.

“That was instructive,” Holmes said. “They have found my trail—or rather, Sigerson’s trail. I hope I didn’t make it too easy on them.” He sipped casually at his whisky. “Well, my friend, I rather fancy I shall be arrested tomorrow.”

“Holmes!” I said, but he raised his hand.

“Please, Watson, it’s all arranged. Are you ready for your part?”

I assured him I was, and tried one last time to argue that there might be a better way, but he stopped me again. “Time is very short,” he said in a tone that, were it not Holmes speaking, I would describe as desperate. “There is no time to enlist middlemen anymore. There is a rumor that the Czar may be going off to Spala soon. That leaves Alexandra to handle domestic affairs, and it is said she will somehow contrive to have the sentences carried out.”

“How can you know that?” I demanded.

Holmes lectured me patiently. “The people Sigerson is allied with have spies everywhere, and it appears that Auguste and his friend Giraud are of interest to them as well as to the Government—they betrayed the cause.” He sighed and finished his drink. “No, Watson, I must act, and now.”

Accepting his judgment, I must have lapsed into a brown study. Holmes picked up the newspaper again. I think he had only been reading it a moment, though, when he again folded it and placed it on his lap.

“You’re right, Watson,” he said quietly. “There is a feeling here. I’d be wise not to ignore it.”

“Yes, there’s that sense of …” Then, realizing I hadn’t said anything, I stopped. Even after years of friendship with Sherlock Holmes, I was always disconcerted by his ability to read my thoughts.

But it was natural to him. Perhaps he was even unaware that he did it. He continued seriously. “To take it a step further,” he said, “there seems to be—or at least I feel, as you do—a spirit of Moriarty in the land.”

“Exactly what I was thinking!” I exclaimed. “Really, Holmes, this is too much! How could you …?”

“Tut, tut, Watson, what could be simpler? I observe you looking at the guests entering from the freezing street. You fold your arms across your chest and shiver in sympathy. Then your eyes light upon the painting of Napoleon’s retreat hanging on the wall across the room. You’re thinking of another bitter winter, another war. Finally, you come to our situation here, you scan the lobby and unconsciously your hand goes to the revolver under your coat.

“But how does Moriarty fit in?” I asked. Though he had described the exact process by which I’d arrived at my vague feeling of unease, even I didn’t understand why Holmes’ old nemesis had entered my mind. After all, Professor Moriarty had died at Reichenbach Falls twenty-five years before.

“What could be simpler, Watson?” Holmes said. “Moriarty was the Napoleon of crime. The painting of the little corporal triggered that memory.” But before I could marvel anew at his logic, he continued. “I feel the chill myself. There is something, as though clinging to the walls—a sense of evil here. It almost has the Professor’s signature upon it.”

“But that’s impossible. Moriarty’s dead.”

“I know.” Holmes stroked his chin and his black eyes hooded over. “Yet I feel him here. It is strange.”

“Had he ever gone to Russia?” I asked. “Perhaps his worldwide net extended even to here.”

Holmes tapped the newspaper. “I know he traveled extensively as a young man, while he still professed to be a simple mathematician. Yes,” he said, striking his knee again, “yes, I remember now! He did come here to study. He acknowledges Professor Rudianko of the University of Moscow in the preface to his treatise on the binomial theorem.” Then he added reflectively, “But I really believed that was before he’d begun his career, his criminal career.”

“Perhaps it was,” I said.

“And yet we both feel his presence somehow. It is odd.”

For a moment, Holmes stared out into nothingness, perhaps remembering some of his past encounters with the grand master of evil, the only man who had ever been a match for him, Professor James Moriarty. Then, shaking himself as though shrugging it off, he stood up. “Well, there’s nothing for it now, Watson, and we’ve got work to do. Shall we go in to dinner?”

I was not to interfere in any way with his arrest. My job, he said, was to appear, armed, at the bridge between the prison and the Winter Palace every evening for the next week after which, if he hadn’t appeared, I was to book passage back to England.

He told me that there was a reasonable chance of arrest, monkey trial, and summary execution, but if he could somehow avoid that fate and get into the prison, he reasoned that his best opportunity for escape would be just after dark.

He had discovered that the full contingent of guards was reduced by two-thirds at night. Further, since no one had before escaped from the prison, he expected an attitude of unwary complacency. I tried to point out
that they might be complacent because no one had ever beaten them, but Holmes refused to entertain any negative thoughts. No, he said, this was an ideal opportunity. He was sure of it.

Shivering in the gusting wind, I stomped from foot to foot, hands thrust deep into my pockets, my revolver securely tucked into my belt. This was my third night at the Neva Bridge and it was dark as Moriarty’s soul in the still-early evening. Across from me, the mass of the Winter Palace loomed blankly at the river’s edge, the occasional yellowish light from a window serving only to make the surrounding darkness blacker.

The Neva itself provided a basso undertone as it forced its way beneath the pilings at the center of the bridge. At its banks, and well out into the stream, it was frozen over, but at its center, the black water rushed with a churning urgency.

The situation over the past two days of waiting had sapped my confidence, and though no one respected the talents of Sherlock Holmes more than myself, I continued to believe that this time he had pushed them beyond their limits. Still, with a heavy heart, I was obeying his orders. If he met with success, I expected some Klaxon rousing the gendarmerie at the prison at the news of the escape. Then perhaps a headlong rush into the narrower streets of the capital, my revolver keeping our followers at a distance.

The silence, therefore, lulled me. I leaned back against the bridge. Foot traffic was light, with only an occasional lone walker hurrying to his or her destination. After the intense clear cold of the last two days, the air had become heavier, with increased wind. Another blizzard was coming.

Looking to my right, I saw three men—one in the uniform of a prison guard—turn onto the bridge. As they came abreast of me, the guard raised his cap and whispered, “Come along, Watson. Step lively, now.”

“Holmes!”

“Say hello to Auguste, and I don’t believe you’ve met Jules Giraud.”

We moved quickly and in silence back into the cover of the city, keeping to the shadows. We returned by back streets to the Astoria. By then it was close to midnight, and if the night clerk noticed anything strange in the old prison guard with the ill-fitting uniform, the two bearded derelicts, and the portly Englishman in his bowler and overcoat, he showed no sign of it.

As soon as we had left the lobby and were in the relative safety and privacy of the hallway, I could wait no longer, and asked Holmes how he had managed it.

“It was quite absurdly simple,” he declared. “Almost disappointing, really.”

Giraud, obviously not used to my friend’s sense of humor, spoke up. “Actually, it stopped just short of being disappointing.”

It must be no small strain to know you will be facing a firing squad in a matter of hours, and the drawn faces of Auguste and Giraud bore eloquent witness to that agony—the specter of their aborted appointment with death.

Auguste is so thin that for the first time in my memory he resembles his father more than his uncle Mycroft. Holmes himself, having also been through an arrest, a trial, and imprisonment, appeared none the worse for wear.

Holmes and I have adjoining suites, and when we closed the door behind us, he suggested that Lupa and Giraud bathe and shave in each of the bathrooms. I had never seen him so solicitous. His son’s trauma had not been lost upon him.

When we were alone, he poured himself a whisky and went to the gasogene, then sat in one of the armchairs, pulled out and lit his pipe, and smiled at me.

“Well, Watson, the fortress is not impregnable, as you can see.” He took a pull at his whisky and crossed his long legs. “We were very fortunate. It could have gone another way quite easily. I think the reputation of the place played into our hands.”

“How is that?”

“Overconfidence. No one is looking out for an escape. There is only one guard on each wing at night.” He chuckled. “I fancy they’ll increase that after tonight.”

“But even so, Holmes,” I protested, “surely it couldn’t have been that simple?”

“Psychology, Watson. Dr. Freud’s tool, and a useful one from time to time. I bullied the guard into thinking he was bullying me, and finessed him into putting me where he thought I’d be most unhappy—with a Frenchman.

“Then, after the meal, if you could call it that, I revealed myself to Giraud. Since he was to be executed the next morning, it was plausible that he might try to kill himself, and I began screaming to the guard that he’d done just that. He lay still on his bed, and I convinced the guard he must have poisoned himself.

“A moment later, the guard entered the cell alone. After all, we were two old men—one of us dead—and he was a young, strong Cossack bully.”

Holmes chuckled again, remembering. “It was but a moment’s work. When he leaned down over Giraud, a simple baritsu technique rendered
him unconscious. After that, I was dressed in his uniform and armed with his gun, and it was child’s play to overcome the one guard in Auguste’s wing.” He smiled again beneath his hooded eyes. “And here we are.”

Before I could comment, the door opened and a well-scrubbed Auguste entered the room.

“Well, Watson,” Holmes said caustically, “I think the diet did my son no harm. But perhaps we should see if we can order some food?”

The kitchen was closed, but we were able to have someone deliver an enormous pot of tea, several loaves of black bread, butter, some herring, a bowl of apples, and a round of hard cheese. The breakfast would have fed eight men under normal circumstances, but by the time Holmes had finished his own ablutions one hour later, nary a crumb was left.