Russian Roulette: How British Spies Thwarted Lenin's Plot for Global Revolution (4 page)

Rasputin was visibly agitated. He confessed to Yusupov that he had been warned that hidden enemies were plotting to kill him. His close friendship with the tsarina and his perceived influence over the tsar had indeed earned him many foes.

Rasputin’s reputation may have been tarnished in the eyes of the public at large, but it had done him no harm amongst the aristocratic ladies of the Imperial court. His attraction was so magnetic – hypnotic, even – that women lost all sense of propriety when they were in his presence. One English eyewitness looked on in horrified astonishment as a succession of princesses queued up to suck his fingers after he had finished eating his meal with his hands.

The death threats against Rasputin had not stopped him from accepting an invitation to the Yusupov Palace. He had been lured there by the promise of a debauched midnight rendezvous with Prince Feliks’s wife, Irina.

Marital infidelity was not unusual amongst the more decadent sections of Petrograd’s aristocratic elite. Yusupov knew that offering his wife to another man would raise few eyebrows amongst those in his own dissolute social circle. He was himself almost certainly bisexual and he was also ambiguous in his gender. He confessed in his memoirs to spending his evenings disguised as a lady and consorting with the gypsy musicians of the Neva Delta.

For Rasputin, the chance of a few snatched hours with Princess Irina was not to be turned down lightly. She was blessed with both a wistful beauty and an impeccable pedigree: she was the tsar’s niece. As Yusupov knew all too well, his wife was most alluring bait.

Dr Lazovert stepped out of the car and opened the side door to the palace, standing aside to allow Yusupov and Rasputin to enter the marbled atrium. The sound of echoed laughter could be heard coming from Yusupov’s study and the gramophone was playing a scratchy version of ‘Yankee Doodle Went To Town’.

The merriment unnerved Rasputin and he asked what was going on. ‘Just my wife entertaining a few friends,’ said Yusupov. ‘They’ll be going soon.’

Neither of these statements was true. Yusupov’s wife was more than 2,000 miles away at the family’s country estate in the Crimea. And the guests had no intention of leaving. Grand Duke Dmitri, the tsar’s first cousin, had arrived a few hours earlier, along with a flamboyant monarchist named Vladimir Purishkevich. There was also a Russian officer named Captain Sergei Soukhatin in the palace that night. Unbeknown to Rasputin, all of these men were conspirators. They were planning to murder him before the first light of dawn broke through the winter sky.

It was to be a night not just of murderous intent, but of spectacular deceit. Nothing was quite as it seemed in the Yusupov Palace on that December evening. Nothing would happen exactly as it was recorded. When the perpetrators came to set down their stories, it was as if the entire evening had been reflected in a distorting mirror that twisted and obscured reality.

The principal eyewitness account was written by Prince Feliks himself. It makes for a compelling, if disturbing, read. He recalled that Rasputin paused momentarily in the atrium before the two of them descended into the palace basement where there was a private dining room.

It was rarely used by the family, for it was a grim vaulted cellar with chiselled stone walls and granite flagstones. But it had one distinct advantage over all the other rooms in the building: it was deep underground and hidden from the eyes and ears of the world. Anything could happen down here and no one would ever know.

Yusupov had decked out the room with antiques to make it look as if it was in daily use. Rugs had been spread across the flagstones and on the red granite mantelpiece there stood golden bowls, antique majolica plates and figurine sculptures carved from ivory.

Rasputin’s eye was drawn not to the rock-crystal crucifix, as Yusupov had expected, but to a small wooden cabinet studded with little mirrors. ‘[He] was particularly fascinated by the little ebony cabinet,’ recalled the prince, ‘and took a childish pleasure in opening and shutting the drawers, exploring it inside and out.’

Rasputin spoke once again of the supposed plot to kill him. ‘There have been several attempts on my life,’ he said, ‘but the Lord has always frustrated these plots. Disaster will come to anyone who lifts a finger against me.’

Yusupov’s account of what happened next is extremely detailed, but it omitted several important facts. He claimed that he had four accomplices, and that one of their number, Dr Lazovert (the fake chauffeur), had supplied the poison that was to be used to murder Rasputin, lacing the cakes and dainties that the target was known to enjoy.

‘Doctor Lazovert put on rubber gloves and ground the cyanide of potassium crystals to powder,’ wrote Yusupov. ‘Then, lifting the top of each cake, he sprinkled the inside with a dose of poison which, according to him, was sufficient to kill several men instantly.’ Concerned that Rasputin might decline the cakes, he dusted the wine glasses with cyanide as well.

Yusupov recalled how Rasputin chatted with him for more than an hour in the underground dining room. Then, finally, he ate two of the poisoned cakes in quick succession. They had no effect.

‘I watched him horror-stricken,’ wrote Yusupov. ‘The poison should have acted immediately but, to my amazement, Rasputin went on talking quite calmly.’

The monk then knocked back several glasses of Madeira, but once again the cyanide proved ineffectual. ‘His face did not change, only from time to time he put his hand to his throat as though he was having some difficulty in swallowing.’

Almost two and a half hours had by now passed since Yusupov and Rasputin arrived at the palace. As the clock struck three, the prince heard his fellow conspirators in the room above. A drowsy Rasputin raised his head and asked what was happening. ‘Probably the guests leaving,’ said Yusupov. ‘I’ll go and see what’s up.’

Yusupov rushed upstairs and broke the news that the poison had not worked. He asked to borrow Grand Duke Dmitri’s pocket Browning and then returned to the basement. He was preparing himself for the kill.

If Yusupov is to be believed, Rasputin was examining the crystal crucifix when he re-entered the room armed with the Browning. ‘A shudder swept over me: my arm grew rigid, I aimed at his heart and pulled the trigger. Rasputin gave a wild scream and crumpled on the bearskin.’

The gunshot brought Yusupov’s friends rushing into the room, all of them anxious to see the dead Rasputin. ‘His features twitched in nervous spasms,’ wrote Yusupov, ‘his hands were clenched, his eyes closed.’

Within moments, his corpse stiffened and all movement ceased. Dr Lazovert examined the body and declared that the bullet had killed him instantly.

The conspirators lingered for a few more minutes before leaving the room in order to discuss the disposal of the corpse. But Yusupov did not stay with them for long. He made his way back downstairs in order to check on his dead victim. And as he peered at Rasputin’s waxen face, his blood ran cold. ‘All of a sudden, I saw the left eye open . . . A few seconds later his right eyelid began to quiver, then opened.’

Yusupov was transfixed by the bodily resurrection that was taking place in front of him. ‘I then saw both eyes – the green eyes of a viper – staring at me with an expression of diabolical hatred.’

And then, dramatically, all hell broke loose. ‘Rasputin leaped to his feet, foaming at the mouth. A wild roar echoed through the vaulted rooms and his hands convulsively thrashed at the air.’

Yusupov would later recall being seized with terror; as well he might. ‘He rushed at me, trying to get at my throat, and sank his fingers into my shoulder like steel claws. His eyes were bursting from their sockets, blood oozed from his lips. And all the time he called me by name, in a low, raucous voice.’

The demonic Rasputin then clasped his way up the stairs and made his escape through one of the doors that led into the courtyard. ‘He was crawling on hands and knees, gasping and roaring like a wounded animal.’

Yusupov screamed at Vladimir Purishkevich, telling him to shoot. Seconds later, he heard two shots ring out, and then another two. When he finally made his way outside, he found Purishkevich standing over Rasputin’s corpse. The tsarina’s holy advisor
was finally dead.

The body was wrapped in a shroud of heavy linen and bundled into the boot of a waiting car. The men then took it to Petrovski Island, where it was tipped over the edge of the high bridge. They watched it tumble into a section of the River Neva that had yet to freeze.

Yusupov’s account details not only his own role in the murder, but also that of Grand Duke Dmitri, Vladimir Purishkevich and Dr Lazovert, as well as Captain Sergei Soukhatin. However, in the days that followed, there were rumours of a sixth conspirator in the palace. Someone else was said to have been present that night – a professional assassin who was working in the shadows.

What Yusupov was at pains to conceal was that Oswald Rayner, a key member of the Russian bureau’s secret inner circle, had also been there that night. His critical role in the killing might have remained a secret for all time had it not been for a fatal mistake on the part of the murderers.

The mistake occurred in the aftermath of the murder, when the plotters were disposing of the body. Yusupov and his friends had assumed that the corpse would sink beneath the ice and be flushed out into the Gulf of Finland. There, trapped under the ice for the rest of the winter, it would be lost forever. What they had never expected was that Rasputin’s corpse would be found and plucked from the icy waters.

Rasputin’s corpse was spotted in the Neva River on the second full day after his death. A river policeman noticed a fur coat lodged beneath the ice and ordered the frozen crust to be broken. The body was carefully prised from its icy sepulchre and taken to the mortuary room of Chesmenskii Hospice. Here, an autopsy was undertaken by Professor Dmitrii Kosorotov.

The professor noted that the corpse was in a terrible state of mutilation: ‘his left side has a weeping wound, due to some sort of slicing object or a sword. His right eye has come out of its cavity and falls down onto his face . . . His right ear is hanging down and torn. His neck has a wound from some sort of rope tie. The victim’s face and body carry traces of blows given by a supple but hard object.’ These injuries suggest that Rasputin had been garrotted and repeatedly beaten with a heavy cosh.

Even more horrifying was the damage to his genitals. At some point during the brutal torture, his legs had been wrenched apart and his testicles had been ‘crushed by the action of a similar object.’ In fact, they had been flattened and completely destroyed.

Other details gleaned by Professor Kosorotov suggest that Yusupov’s melodramatic account of the murder was nothing more than fantasy. Yet it was fantasy with a purpose. It was imperative for Yusupov to depict Rasputin as a demonic, superhuman figure whose malign hold over the tsarina was proving disastrous for Russia. The only way he could escape punishment for the murder was to present himself as the saviour of Russia: the man who had rid the country of an evil force.

The story of the poisoned cakes was almost certainly an invention: the postmortem included an examination of the contents of Rasputin’s stomach: ‘The examination,’ wrote the professor, ‘reveals no trace of poison.’

Professor Kosorotov also examined the three bullet wounds in Rasputin’s body. ‘The first has penetrated the left side of the chest and has gone through the stomach and liver,’ he wrote. ‘The second has entered into the right side of the back and gone through the kidney.’ Both of these would have inflicted terrible wounds. But the third bullet was the fatal shot. ‘[It] hit the victim on the forehead and penetrated into his brain.’

It was most unfortunate that Professor Kosorotov’s postmortem was brought to an abrupt halt on the orders of the tsarina. But the professor did have time to photograph the corpse and to inspect the bullet entry wounds. He noted that they ‘came from different calibre revolvers.’

On the night of the murder, Yusupov was in possession of Grand Duke Dmitrii’s Browning, while Purishkevich had a Sauvage. Either of these weapons could have caused the wounds to Rasputin’s liver and kidney. But the fatal gunshot wound to Rasputin’s head was not caused by an automatic weapon: it could only have come from a revolver. Forensic scientists and ballistic experts agree that the grazing around the wound was consistent with that which is left by a lead, non-jacketed bullet fired at point-blank range.

They also agree that the gun was almost certainly a British-made .455 Webley revolver. This was the favourite gun of Oswald Rayner, a close friend of Yusupov since the days when they had both studied at Oxford University.