The Dragon Book (16 page)

I already knew that I would have my old friend Vladimir on my side. He had called out Rasputin in the Duma, saying in a passionate speech that the monk had taken the Tsar’s ministers firmly in hand. How did he put it? Oh yes, that the ministers “have been turned into marionettes.” That was a good figure of speech. I hardly knew he had it in him. A good man with a pistol, though.

But we would have to be careful. Rasputin was thought by the peasants to be unkillable. Especially after that slattern tried to gut him, calling him the Antichrist. She had missed her opportunity. Yes, her knife slid through his soft belly, and he stood before her with his entrails spilled out. But some local doctor pushed the tangled mess back in the empty cavity and sewed him up again.

Oh yes, he might be the very devil to kill.

And realizing that I’d made a joke—rare enough for me—I entered the apartments, giggling.

Ninotchka was alone, working on her sewing. She looked up, the blond hair framing that perfect heart-shaped face. “A joke, my darling?” she asked.

“A joke,” I said, “but not one a man can share with his adorable wife.” I cupped her chin with my right hand.

She wrinkled her nose. “You stink, my love. What
is
that smell?”

I had forgotten to wash the stench of dragon off my hands.

“It is nothing. I was talking to the horses that pull our carriage, reminding them of what sweet cargo they will have aboard tonight.”

“Tonight?” The look in her eyes forgave me the stench. It was not yet the start of the Season, and she was growing feverish for some fun. I would take her to the Maryinski Theater and to dinner afterwards. And she would reward me later.

“I have planned a special treat out for us. It was to have been a surprise.” It was amazing how easily the lie came out. “And now I have business,” I added. “I beg you to go to your rooms. You and your women.”

“Government business?” she asked, so sweetly that I knew that she was trying to find out some bit of gossip she could sell to the highest bidder. After all, I alone could not keep her in jewels. Later in bed, I would sleepily let out a minor secret. Not this one, of course. I am a patriot, after all. I serve the Tsar. Even though the Tsar has not lately served me at all.

I smiled back. “Very definitely government business.”

After she went in, I locked the door from the outside. Then I sat at my desk and wrote my letters. Satisfied with the way I had suggested but never actually said what the reason for the meeting was, I called my man in to deliver them and to make a reservation at the Maryinski and
Chez Galouise
, the finest French restaurant in the city, for their last sitting. I knew I could trust Alexie completely. He, at least, would never shop me to my enemies. After all, I had saved his life upon three separate occasions. That kind of loyalty is what distinguishes a man from a woman.

SPRING would break in Russia like the smiles of women Bronstein had known: cautious, cold, and a long time coming. But now they were in the deepest part of the winter. Snow lay indifferently on the ground, as if it knew that it still had months of discomfort to visit on the people, rich and poor alike.
But,
Bronstein told himself,
on the poor even more.
The peasants, at the bottom of the heap, might even have to tear the thatch from their roofs to feed the livestock if things got much worse.

He’d visited the eggs a dozen more times, going each visit by a different route and always brushing away his back trail carefully. He spent hours with the eggs, squatting in the cold, snowy field and talking out his plans as if the dragons could hear him. He had no one else to tell. Borutsch had fled to Berlin, and Bronstein feared that the old man had spilled his secret before leaving. But he spotted no one following him, and the eggs had never been disturbed.

But not this time.

Bronstein could see something was wrong as soon as he spotted the lightning-split pine. The ground beneath it was torn up, the leaves scattered. Running up to the tree, he gaped in horror at a hole in the ground that was completely devoid of eggs.

Mein Gott und Marx,
he swore in silent German.
The Tsar’s men have found them!

There was no time to tear his hair or weep uncontrollably; he knew that he had to flee.

Perhaps I can join Borutsch in Berlin. If he’ll have me.

Bronstein turned to run but was stopped cold by a rustling sound in the brush behind him.

Soldiers!
he thought desperately. Reaching into his pocket and pulling out the small pistol he’d taken to carrying, he waved it at his unseen enemies before realizing how useless it would be against what sounded like an entire company of soldiers.

Swiveling his head from side to side as more rustling came from all around him, he came to a grim decision.

So this is how it ends.

The gun shook as he raised it to his temple.

“Long live the revolution!” he shouted, then winced.
Oh, to have not died with a cliché on my lips!

His finger tightened on the trigger, then stopped just short of firing as a dragon the size of a newborn lamb—and just as unsteady on its feet—pushed through the bushes and into view.

“Gevalt!”

The dragon emitted a sound somewhere between a mew and a hiss and wobbled directly up to Bronstein, who took an involuntary step back. Even as a hatchling, the creature was fearsome to look at, all leathery hide and oversized bat wings, and came up to his knees. Its eyes were the gold of a full-grown beast, though still cloudy from the albumin that coated its skin and made it glisten in the thin forest light. He wondered if they would stay that color, or change, as babies’ eyes do. He’d heard the Tsar’s dragons had eyes like shrouds. Of course, the man who told him that could have been exaggerating for effect. And though the pronounced teeth that gave the adult dragons their truly sinister appearance had yet to grow in, the egg tooth at the tip of the little dragonling’s beak looked sharp enough to kill if called upon. And the claws that scritch-scratched through the sticks and leaves looked even now as though they could easily gut a cow.

But Bronstein quickly remembered Lenin’s advice.

Dragons respect only power. And fresh-hatched, you must be the only power they know.

So he pocketed the pistol that he still held stupidly to his head and stepped forward, putting both hands on the dragon’s moist skin.

“Down, beast,” he said firmly, pressing down. The beast collapsed on its side, mewling piteously. Grabbing a handful of dead leaves from the trees, Bronstein began scraping and scrubbing, cleaning the egg slime from the dragon’s skin, talking the whole time. “Down, beast,” and, “Stay still, monster!”

More dragons wandered out of the brush, attracted, no doubt, by the sound of his voice.

Perhaps,
Bronstein thought,
they could hear me through their shells these last months
. Whether that was true or not, he was glad that he’d spoken to them all that while.

“Down!” he bade the new dragons, and they, too, obeyed.

As he scraped and scrubbed, Bronstein could see the dragons’ color emerging. They were red, not black.

Red, like fire. Red, like blood.

Somehow that was comforting.

THE mad monk had heard talk of dragons. Of course he’d often heard talk of dragons. But this time there was something different in the tenor of the conversations, and he was always alert to changes in gossip.

It had something to do with a red terror, which was odd, since the Tsar’s dragons were black. But when his sources were pressed further—a kitchen maid, a bootboy, the man-boy who exercised the Tsar’s dogs and slept with them as well—they couldn’t say more than that.

Red terror!
He tried to imagine what they meant, his hands wrangling together. It could mean nothing or everything. It could have nothing to do with dragons at all and everything to do with assassination attempts. A palace was the perfect place for such plots. Like a dish of stew left on the stove too many days, there was a stink about it.

But if there was a plot, he would know about it. He would master it. He would use it for his own good.

“Find me more about this red terror,” he whispered to the kitchen maid, a skinny little thing with a crooked nose. “And we will talk of marriage.” That he was already married mattered not a bit. He would find her a mate, and she knew it.

“Find me more about this red terror,” he told the bootboy, “and I shall make sure you rise to footman.” It was his little joke, that. The boy was not smart enough for the job he already had. But there were always ways to make the boy think he’d tried.

He said nothing more to the dog’s keeper. As his old mother used to tell him: A
spoken word is not a sparrow. Once it flies out, you can’t catch it.
He knew that the dog boy spoke in his sleep, his hands and feet scrabbling on the rushes the way his hounds did when they dreamed. Everybody listened in.

The truth that peasants speak is not the same as the truth that the powerful know. Having been one and become the other, the mad monk knew this better than most. He wrung his hands once more. “Find me more about this red terror,” he muttered to no one in particular.

But even as he asked, he drew in upon himself, becoming moody, cautious, worried. Walking alone by the frozen River Neva, he tried to puzzle through all he’d heard. It was as if the world was sending him messages in code. He asked his secretary, Simanovich, for paper, and wrote a letter to the Tsar telling him of the signs and warning him, too. But he did not send it. It was too soon. Once he found out all about this red terror, he would personally hand the letter to the Tsar.

THE red dragons were restless, snapping at their keepers and tugging at their leads. Bronstein tried to keep them in line—he was the only one they really listened to—but even he was having trouble with them tonight.

“Why do they act this way?”

“And why do you not stop them?”

The speakers were Koba and Kamo, two middlemen sent by Lenin to oversee the training of the beasts. Or the “Red Terror,” as Lenin had dubbed them. That was so like Lenin, trusting no one. Not even his own handpicked men. He’d told them nothing beside the fact that they would be underground. They’d assumed they were to be spies. And so they were, of a sort.

Bronstein couldn’t tell Koba and Kamo apart. And he didn’t like their manner: arrogance compounded by … by … He couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

“The dragons are bred to the sky,” he said archly, “and this stay underground irks them.” He fixed one of them—the one with the slightly thicker moustache,
Koba, maybe
—with a glare. “And you may try to stop them if you wish.”

Maybe-Koba looked at the dragons for a moment as if considering it. He didn’t look hopeful. But he didn’t look frightened either.