The Romanov Cross: A Novel (19 page)

Skirting a wheelbarrow with a missing wheel, he started to rummage around among the shovels, looking for the ones best suited to the job. He’d need at least one with a broad flat blade in case the snow came down hard, and a couple more with sharper, firmer ends for penetrating the soil. Chisels would be good, too; they could be driven into the ground like stakes and, if placed well enough, Eddie and Russell might be able to remove whole slabs of earth, virtually intact, all at once.

The wind was blowing so hard at the metal doors that one of them banged shut again, and Harley jumped at the sound. The hanging light fixture swung from the ceiling like a pendulum, and Harley wished the damn thing had a higher-wattage bulb in it. Everything in the room cast a weird shadow around the corrugated metal walls, and for one split second Harley thought he caught a glimpse of something moving behind him, as if it had just entered the shed.

Could the damn dog have been let loose? He stood stock-still, waiting, but he didn’t see anything skulking along the ground, among the
planks and chain saws. And if he listened carefully, as he was doing now, over the sound of the wind he could hear the Rottweiler howling in the gun shop next door, right where she belonged.

But howling like she was freaking out over something.

Harley didn’t understand the point of dogs. As far as he was concerned, they were just failed wolves—and you could shoot the whole lot of them, for all he cared.

He went back to picking his tools—he didn’t want to spend all day in here, since what he was doing might, technically, be called stealing if the owner caught him at it—but stopped when he thought he heard something moving again, on just the other side of a tall stack of boards.

“Hey,” he said. “Somebody in here?”

But there was no reply.

“McDaniel?” he said, thinking it might be the owner of the lumberyard trying to catch him red-handed. “That you? It’s Harley.”

Still no answer, but definitely the sound of a footfall.

“I just needed to borrow a shovel to clear the ice off my trailer hitch. Hope that’s okay.” But knowing the reputation the Vane boys had around town, he added, “I was gonna put it right back as soon as I was done.” And for once, Christ, it was almost the truth.

With a spade still in his hands, he crept gingerly to the end of the pile, expecting maybe to see McDaniel, or even that Inuit kid who worked as his assistant, but what he saw instead, going in and out of the light, was more like some scrawny scarecrow. At first he even thought it might be a mannequin.

But then it blinked.

“Who the fuck are you?” he said, but even as he asked, he recognized him.

The wet brown hair, hanging down onto the gray tunic with the banded collar. The long black sealskin coat. The big dark eyes, the petrified skin, the yellow teeth protruding from the drawn lips.

It was the body from the coffin he’d found in the nets.

And as he looked on in horror, the creature extended his hand, as if expecting to be given something.

“What do you want?” Harley said, backing up but clutching the spade for dear life. “Get the fuck out of here!”

The young man opened his mouth—and Harley could swear that, even from ten feet away, he got a gust of the foulest air he had ever smelled—and said something in what sounded like Russian. But Russian spoken as if by someone still in the act of drowning, the words gurgling and slurred.

Harley lifted the spade and cocked it back over one shoulder, like a baseball bat.

“Don’t come any closer!”

He could hear the Rottweiler next door going crazier than ever, and for once he did wish the damn dog had gotten loose.

The man repeated whatever he’d said, and even lifted a hand—the fingers were nothing but stark white bones, with long, curling nails—and touched an area of his chest.

Right about where the emerald cross had hung.

Jesus Christ
. If Harley had had it on him, he’d have thrown the damn thing right back at him.

“I don’t have it!” he shouted. And then, as if it would make any sense, “Charlie’s got it!”

But the man didn’t look like he understood a word of English, and when he took a step forward, Harley found himself backed up against the rear wall of the shed. He brandished the spade, but the man took no apparent notice. He came closer and Harley swung the spade at him, catching him on the shoulder and flinging him like a bundle of sticks and rags into a pile of loose timbers and shavings.

Screaming, Harley leapt over the spot where he had been standing, and with the spade still clutched in his hand, ran toward the door, knocking the wheelbarrow over on its side, then out into the alleyway. The Rottweiler was going crazy, barking in a frenzy and foaming at the window. Looking over his shoulder, Harley suddenly collided with something, or someone, and went sprawling on the ground.

Standing above him, looking pissed and confused, was McDaniel.

“What the hell are you up to, Harley?” His eyes flicked to the spade. “You planning to shovel my driveway?”

“I just needed to borrow this,” Harley said, still trying to catch his breath and keeping an eye on the open doors to the shed. Was the damn thing going to come out after him?

“Borrow it?” McDaniel said. “Yeah, right.”

He stomped into the shed before Harley could stop him, and after a minute or so, Harley saw the light go out and McDaniel came out again, none the worse for wear.

“You need to borrow some tools,” he said, “all you have to do is ask.”

“Got it,” Harley said, standing on his own two feet now. But what had happened to that corpse in the sealskin coat? Had McDaniel missed it somehow? Or was it just … gone?

“That was a pretty good speech you made in the church.”

Was it ever there in the first place? Harley wondered if he was losing it.

“Now don’t go fucking things up by stealing stuff again.”

Harley nodded, and shuffled off toward his trailer, leaving the spade propped by the steps. His hands were so cold and unsteady he had trouble getting the key in the lock. And when he did finally turn to close the door behind him, he saw McDaniel still watching him and shaking his head.

Tonight, Prince Felix Yussoupov thought, I am going to change everything. Not only the way the world regards me, but history itself.

Oh, he was well aware of the figure he cut in cosmopolitan society. For years, he had deliberately gone about shocking everyone he knew—showing up in the finest women’s fashions and draped in his mother’s jewels, at cafés and restaurants and parties. He had hosted wild parties—orgies, to be frank—at one or another of his family’s many palaces in Moscow, St. Petersburg, or the countryside. He had enjoyed the favors of girls and boys alike, actresses and opera singers and dashing young sailors. And to cap it all off, he had married one of the Tsar’s own nieces, the Princess Irina, celebrated for her unparalleled beauty. In truth, he thought he was just as good-looking as she was, but she was a very sought-after match, and together he had to admit that they made a perfect pair.

Tonight, however, the princess was safely ensconced hundreds of miles from St. Petersburg, in the grand Yussoupov hunting lodge in the Crimea. He wanted her nowhere near the Moika Palace tonight, on this fateful New Year’s Eve. It was enough that she had served as bait for the trap.

Yussoupov had promised Rasputin that if he came to the palace at
midnight, there would be a private party at which the monk would be introduced, at long last, to this famous beauty. “The princess has heard so much about you,” Yussoupov told him, “she insisted that I arrange for her to meet you in person.” The man’s rapacity was exceeded only by his vanity. “I have promised her you would be there.”

The prince had sent his own motorcar—the black Bentley with the family crest on the doors—to pick up Rasputin and bring him to the palace. Checking his gold pocket watch, he saw that the car should be arriving any minute. From the upper floor, he could hear the gramophone playing “Yankee Doodle Dandy”—a very popular tune among Russian society these days—and the sound of his coconspirators’ voices, simulating the merriment of a party in full swing.

Snow was falling on the flagstones of the court outside and sticking to the thin sheet of ice that covered the canal beyond the gates. Downstairs, in the vaulted chambers where the deed was to be done, all was in readiness. The dainty cakes, laced with cyanide, were arrayed on silver salvers. The Madeira, also poisoned, was decanted and waiting only to be drunk. And when Yussoupov saw Dr. Lazovert, disguised as a chauffeur, pilot the car through the iron gates, he stepped outside to greet his guest.

“Welcome!” he shouted, throwing open his arms, as Rasputin disembarked.

“Felix!” Rasputin replied, grasping him in a bear hug.

For the mad monk, he was positively presentable tonight. Yussoupov could tell the man had bathed—the scent of cheap soap clung to his skin—and he was wearing an intricately embroidered silk blouse and black-velvet trousers. Even his leather boots were shined and clean.

But the pectoral cross that usually dangled around his throat, its emeralds reputedly imbued with some mystical powers of enchantment—for how else could a brute like this have risen to such eminence and power?—was nowhere visible. Yussoupov took it as a stroke of luck, like entering the lists against an opponent with a broken lance.

Cocking his head at the noise from the upper windows, Rasputin said, “You’ve started the merriment without me!”

But the prince was already guiding him into the vestibule and away from the main staircase. Rasputin resisted, and Yussoupov had to whisper, “The princess will join us downstairs, for our own party, later.”

“What’s wrong with that one?” Rasputin said, with a glint of indignation in his eye.

“It’s a rather stuffy affair,” Yussoupov said, urging him again toward the stairs to the cellar. “Several of those troublemakers from the Duma are there.”

“I’m not afraid of them!” Rasputin said. “They can rail about me all they want! I eat politicians for breakfast.”

“But we have something far better waiting for you.”

Reluctantly, Rasputin allowed himself to be led down the winding stairs to the vaulted rooms below. A roaring fire had been set in the hearth, and the air had been perfumed with incense. Grand Duke Dmitri, standing nervously by the bar, held up a glass of champagne and echoed the welcome from their host.

Rasputin looked mollified by his presence. He was an interesting mix, this so-called holy man—one moment a man of the people, speaking for the peasants, and the next a craven adventurer, eager to find favor with the nobles whom he pretended to despise. One thing Yussoupov did know was that Rasputin had become a liability to the aristocracy; with the Tsaritsa completely in his thrall, he was able to make or break the fortunes of anyone at court. And he had begun to use that influence, more and more, to meddle in affairs of state—and even to influence the course of the war. With Rasputin trying to second-guess everything from the military’s strategy to the Tsar’s choice of ministers, it was plain to patriots like Prince Felix and the Grand Duke Dmitri that something had to be done.

And tonight, they would do it. When the news got out, the prince was certain that he would be miraculously transformed in the public mind from notorious, rich wastrel to the Savior of Mother Russia.

“We’ve made your favorites,” Dmitri said, proffering the platter of cakes that Rasputin normally adored, but to his and Felix’s consternation, the
starets
declined them. He wandered around the room, passing under the stone arches and admiring the
objets d’art
that filled the glass vitrines. The granite floors were covered with thick Persian carpets and a white bearskin rug, the bear’s head still attached and fangs bared.

“Music!” Yussoupov said, clapping his hands, and Dmitri picked up a balalaika and began to strum. Rasputin began to wave his hand in time to the music, then slumped onto a carved divan. On the table beside him, the cakes beckoned, and as Yussoupov pretended not to notice, Rasputin idly picked one up and gobbled it down.

Dr. Lazovert, who had personally ground up the potassium cyanide and sprinkled it into each pastry, had sworn that death would be nearly instantaneous.

Even Dmitri slowed his strumming to watch.

But Rasputin simply grinned, and said, “Again! And play something more cheerful this time!”

The prince looked on in wonder as the monk picked a crumb from his bushy beard and ate it.

Along with a second cake.

Dmitri’s fingers fumbled at the strings of the instrument. Yussoupov waited with bated breath. Rasputin appeared unaffected.

“Perhaps our guest would enjoy some wine,” Dmitri said, a telltale quaver in his voice, and Yussoupov, as if waking from a bad dream, quickly went to fetch the decanter. Filling a crystal goblet with Madeira, he held it out to the reclining monk.

“You want me to drink alone?” Rasputin said, taking the glass, and the prince, feigning amusement, returned to the bar and poured himself a generous snifter of brandy, instead.

“To the New Year!” he said, raising his glass.

“To the beautiful Princess Irina!” Rasputin bellowed, as the clock in the corner struck the hour. “Is she ever planning to join us down
here?” He downed the glass of Madeira, wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve, then held out his glass for more. The prince nearly staggered as he fetched the bottle and refilled the glass.

Was it possible, he began to wonder? Could this creature—this filthy monk from the wastelands of Siberia—truly be some sort of prophet? Even without the pectoral cross, was he invulnerable, watched over by some divine Providence, as he had so often and grandly proclaimed?

The Grand Duke Dmitri, pleading a sudden headache, dropped the balalaika on an ottoman and fled up the winding stairs in terror. Rasputin stirred himself on the couch, then abruptly stood. Thank God, Yussoupov thought, the man was at least weaving on his feet. He ambled like a bear toward one of the vitrines, the one that held a rock-crystal crucifix fashioned in sixteenth-century Italy, and studied it through the glass.